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8. But let us see what advantage it is that these words have sounded, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We also uttered words when we spoke. Was it such a word that was with God? Did not those words which we uttered sound and pass away? Did God’s Word, then, sound and come to an end? If so, how were all things made by it, and without it was nothing made? how is that which it created ruled by it, if it sounded and passed away? What sort of a word, then, is that which is both uttered and passes not away? Give ear, my beloved, it is a great matter. By everyday talk, words here become despicable to us, because through their sounding and passing away they are despised, and seem nothing but words. But there is a word in the man himself which remains within; for the sound proceeds from the mouth. There is a word which is spoken in a truly spiritual manner, that which you understand from the sound, not the sound itself. Mark, I speak a word when I say “God.” How short the word which I have spoken—four letters and two syllables!16 Is this all that God is, four letters and two syllables? Or is that which is signified as costly as the word is paltry? What took place in thy heart when thou heardest “God”? What took place in my heart when I said “God”? A certain great and perfect substance was in our thoughts, transcending every changeable creature of flesh or of soul. And if I say to thee, “Is God changeable or unchangeable?” thou wilt answer immediately, “Far be it from me either to believe or imagine that God is changeable: God is unchangeable.” Thy soul, though small, though perhaps still carnal, could not answer me otherwise than that God is unchangeable: but every creature is changeable; how then wert thou able to enter, by a glance of thy spirit, into that which is above the creature, so as confidently to answer me, “God is unchangeable”? What, then, is that in thy heart, when thou thinkest of a certain substance, living, eternal, all-powerful, infinite, everywhere present, everywhere whole, nowhere shut in? When thou thinkest of these qualities, this is the word concerning God in thy heart. But is this that sound which consists of four letters and two syllables? Therefore, whatever things are spoken and pass away are sounds, are letters, are syllables. His word which sounds passes away; but that which the sound signified, and was in the speaker as he thought of it, and in the hearer as he understood it, that remains while the sounds pass away.

9. Turn thy attention to that word. Thou canst have a word in thy heart, as it were a design born in thy mind, so that thy mind brings forth the design; and the design is, so to speak, the offspring of thy mind, the child of thy heart. For first thy heart brings forth a design to construct some fabric, to set up something great on the earth; already the design is conceived, and the work is not yet finished: thou seest what thou wilt make; but another does not admire, until thou hast made and constructed the pile, and brought that fabric into shape and to completion; then men regard the admirable fabric, and admire the design of 16 Deus. the architect; they are astonished at what they see, and are pleased with what they do not see: who is there who can see a design? If, then, on account of some great building a human design receives praise, do you wish to see what a design of God is the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, the Word of God? Mark this fabric of the world. View what was made by the Word, and then thou wilt understand what is the nature of the world. Mark these two bodies of the world, the heavens and the earth. Who will unfold in words the beauty of the heavens? Who will unfold in words the fruitfulness of the earth? Who will worthily extol the changes of the seasons? Who will worthily extol the power of seeds? You see what things I do not mention, lest in giving a long list I should perhaps tell of less than you can call up to your own minds. From this fabric, then, judge the nature of the Word by which it was made: and not it alone; for all these things are seen, because they have to do with the bodily sense. By that Word angels also were made; by that Word archangels were made, powers, thrones, dominions, principalities; by that Word were made all things. Hence, judge what a Word this is.

10. Perhaps some one now answers me, “Who so conceives this Word?” Do not then imagine, as it were, some paltry thing when thou hearest “the Word,” nor suppose it to be words such as thou hearest them every day—“he spoke such words,” “such words he uttered,” “such words you tell me;” for by constant repetition the term word has become, so to speak, worthless. And when thou hearest, “In the beginning was the Word,” lest thou shouldest imagine something worthless, such as thou hast been accustomed to think of when thou wert wont to listen to human words, hearken to what thou must think of: “The Word was God.”

11. Now some unbelieving Arian may come forth and say that “the Word of God was made.” How can it be that the Word of God was made, when God by the Word made all things? If the Word of God was itself also made, by what other Word was it made? But if thou sayest that there is a Word of the Word, I say, that by which it was made is itself the only Son of God. But if thou dost not say there is a Word of the Word, allow that that was not made by which all things were made. For that by which all things were made could not be made by itself. Believe the evangelist then. For he might have said, “In the beginning God made the Word:” even as Moses said, “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth;” and enumerates all things thus: “God said, Let it be made, and it was made.”17 If “said,” who said? God. And what was made? Some creature. Between the speaking of God and the making of the creature, what was there by which it was made but the Word? For God said, “Let it be made, and it was made.” This Word is unchangeable; although changeable things are made by it, the Word itself is unchangeable.

It is fitting, brethren, that as far as possible we should treat of the text of Holy Scripture, and especially of the Holy Gospel, without omitting any portion, that both we ourselves may derive nourishment according to our capacity, and may minister to you from that source from which we have been nourished. Last Lord’s day, we remember, we treated of the first section; that is, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was nothing made. That which was made, in Him is life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” So far, I believe, had I advanced in the treatment of the passage: let all who were present recall what was then said; and those of you who were not present, believe me and those who chose to be present. Now therefore,—because we cannot always be repeating everything, out of justice to those who desire to hear what follows, and because repetition of the former thought is a burden to them and deprives them of what succeeds,—let those who were absent on the former occasion refrain from demanding repetition, but, together with those who were here, listen to the present exposition.

2. It goes on, “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” Truly, brethren beloved, those things which were said before, were said regarding the ineffable divinity of Christ, and almost ineffably. For who shall comprehend “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God”? And do not allow the name word to appear mean to you, through the habit of daily words, for it is added, “and the Word was God.” This Word is He of whom yesterday we spoke much; and I trust that God was present, and that even from only thus much speaking something reached your hearts. “In the beginning was the Word.” He is the same, and is in the same manner; as He is, so He is always; He cannot be changed; that is, He is. This His name He spoke to His servant Moses: “I am that I am; and He that is hath sent me.”27 Who then shall comprehend this when you see that all mortal things are variable; when you see that not only do bodies vary as to their qualities, by being born, by increasing, by becoming less, by dying, but that even souls themselves through the effect of divers volitions are distended and divided; when you see that men can obtain wisdom if they apply themselves to its light and heat, and also lose wisdom if they remove themselves from it through some evil influence? When, therefore, you see that all those things are variable, what is that which is, unless that which transcends all things which are so that they are not? Who then can receive this? Or who, in what manner soever he may have applied the strength of his mind to touch that which is, can reach to that which he may in any way 27 Ex. iii. 14. have touched with his mind? It is as if one were to see his native land at a distance, and the sea intervening; he sees whither he would go, but he has not the means of going. So we desire to arrive at that our stability where that which is, is, because this alone always is as it is: the sea of this world interrupts our course, even although already we see whither we go; for many do not even see whither they go. That there might be a way by which we could go, He has come from Him to whom we wished to go. And what has He done? He has appointed a tree by which we may cross the sea. For no one is able to cross the sea of this world, unless borne by the cross of Christ. Even he who is of weak eyesight sometimes embraces this cross; and he who does not see from afar whither he goes, let him not depart from it, and it will carry him over.

3. Therefore, my brethren, I would desire to have impressed this upon your hearts: if you wish to live in a pious and Christian manner, cling to Christ according to that which He became for us, that you may arrive at Him according to that which is, and according to that which was. He approached, that for us He might become this; because He became that for us, on which the weak may be borne, and cross the sea of this world and reach their native country; where there will be no need of a ship, for no sea is crossed. It is better then not to see with the mind that which is, and yet not to depart from the cross of Christ, than to see it with the mind, and despise the cross of Christ. It is good beyond this, and best of all, if it be possible, that we both see whither we ought to go, and hold fast that which carries us as we go. This they were able to do, the great minds of the mountains, who have been called mountains, whom the light of divine justice pre-eminently illuminates; they were able to do this, and saw that which is. For John seeing said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” They saw this, and in order that they might arrive at that which they saw from afar, they did not depart from the cross of Christ, and did not despise Christ’s lowliness. But little ones who cannot understand this, who do not depart from the cross and passion and resurrection of Christ, are conducted in that same ship to that which they do not see, in which they also arrive who do see.

4. But truly there have been some philosophers of this world who have sought for the Creator by means of the creature; for He can be found by means of the creature, as the apostle plainly says, “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and glory; so they are without excuse.” And it follows, “Because that, when they knew God;” he did not say, Because they did not know, but “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” How darkened? It follows, when he says more plainly: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”28 They saw whither they must come; 28 Rom. i. 20–22. but ungrateful to Him who afforded them what they saw, they wished to ascribe to themselves what they saw; and having become proud, they lost what they saw, and were turned from it to idols and images, and to the worship of demons, to adore the creature and to despise the Creator. But these having been blinded did those things, and became proud, that they might be blinded: when they were proud they said that they were wise. Those, therefore, concerning whom he said, “Who, when they had known God,” saw this which John says, that by the Word of God all things were made. For these things are also found in the books of the philosophers: and that God has an only-begotten Son, by whom are all things. They were able to see that which is, but they saw it from afar: they were unwilling to hold the lowliness of Christ, in which ship they might have arrived in safety at that which they were able to see from afar and the cross of Christ appeared vile to them. The sea has to be crossed, and dost thou despise the wood? Oh, proud wisdom! thou laughest to scorn the crucified Christ; it is He whom thou dost see from afar: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” But wherefore was He crucified? Because the wood of His humiliation was needful to thee. For thou hadst become swollen with pride, and hadst been cast out far from that fatherland; and by the waves of this world has the way been intercepted, and there is no means of passing to the fatherland unless borne by the wood. Ungrateful one! thou laughest Him to scorn who has come to thee that thou mayest return: He has become the way, and that through the sea:29 thence He walked in the sea to show that there is a way in the sea. But thou who art not able in any way thyself to walk in the sea, be carried in a ship, be carried by the wood: believe in the crucified One, and thou shalt arrive thither. On account of thee He was crucified, to teach thee humility; and because if He should come as God, He would not be recognized. For if He should come as God, He would not come to those who were not able to see God. For not according to His Godhead does He either come or depart; since He is everywhere present, and is contained in no place. But, according to what did He come? He appeared as a man.

5. Therefore, because He was so man, that the God lay hid in Him, there was sent before Him a great man, by whose testimony He might be found to be more than man. And who is this? “He was a man.” And how could that man speak the truth concerning God? “He was sent by God.” What was he called? “Whose name was John.” Wherefore did he come? “He came for a witness, that he might bear witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him.” What sort of man was he who was to bear witness concerning the light? Something great was that John, vast merit, great grace, great loftiness! Admire, by all means, admire; but as it were a mountain. But a mountain is in darkness unless it be clothed with light. Therefore only admire John that you may hear what follows, “He was not that light;” lest if, when thou thinkest the mountain to be the light, thou make shipwreck on the 29 Matt. xiv. 25. mountain, and find not consolation. But what oughtest thou to admire? The mountain as a mountain. But lift thyself up to Him who illuminates the mountain, which for this end was elevated that it might be the first to receive the rays, and make them known to your eyes. Therefore, “he was not that light.”

6. Wherefore then did he come? “But that he might bear witness concerning the light.” Why so? “That all might believe through him.” And concerning what light was he to bear witness? “That was the true light.” Wherefore is it added true? Because an enlightened man is also called a light; but the true light is that which enlightens. For even our eyes are called lights; and nevertheless, unless either during the night a lamp is lighted, or during the day the sun goes forth, these lights are open in vain. Thus, therefore, John was a light, but not the true light; because, if not enlightened, he would have been darkness; but, by enlightenment, he became a light. For unless he had been enlightened he would have been darkness, as all those once impious men, to whom, as believers, the apostle said, “Ye were sometimes darkness.” But now, because they had believed, what?—“but now are ye light,” he says, “in the Lord.”30 Unless he had added “in the Lord,” we should not have understood. “Light,” he says, “in the Lord:” darkness you were not in the Lord. “For ye were sometimes darkness,” where he did not add in the Lord. Therefore, darkness in you, light in the Lord. And thus “he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of the light.”

7. But where is that light? “He was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” If every man that cometh, then also John. The true light, therefore, enlightened him by whom He desired Himself to be pointed out. Understand, beloved, for He came to infirm minds, to wounded hearts, to the gaze of dim-eyed souls. For this purpose had He come. And whence was the soul able to see that which perfectly is? Even as it commonly happens, that by means of some illuminated body, the sun, which we cannot see with the eyes, is known to have arisen. Because even those who have wounded eyes are able to see a wall illuminated and enlightened by the sun, or a mountain, or a tree, or anything of that sort; and, by means of another body illuminated, that arising is shown to those who are not as yet able to gaze on it. Thus, therefore all those to whom Christ came were not fit to see Him: upon John He shed the beams of His light; and by means of him confessing himself to have been irradiated and enlightened, not claiming to be one who irradiates and enlightens, He is known who enlightens, He is known who illuminates, He is known who fills. And who is it? “He who lighteth every man,” he says, “who cometh into the world.” For if man had not receded from that light, he would not have required to be illuminated; but for this reason has he to be illuminated here, because he departed from that light by which man might always have been illuminated.

We undertook, in the name of the Lord, and promised to you, beloved, to treat of that grace and truth of God, full of which the only-begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, appeared to the saints, and to show how, as a matter belonging to the New Testament, it is to be distinguished from the Old Testament. Give, then, your attention that what I receive in my measure from God you in your measure may receive and hear the same. For it will only remain if, when the seed is scattered in your hearts, the birds take it not away, nor thorns choke it, nor heat scorch it, and there descend upon it the rain of daily exhortations and your own good thoughts, by which that is done in the heart which in the field is done by means of harrows, so that the clod is broken, and the seed covered and enabled to germinate: that you bear fruit at which the husbandman may be glad and rejoice. But if, in return for good seed and good rain, you bring forth not fruit but thorns, the seed will not be blamed, nor will the rain be in fault; but for thorns due fire is prepared.43

2. I do not think that I need spend much time in endeavoring to persuade you that we are Christian men; and if Christians, by virtue of the name, belonging to Christ. Upon the forehead we bear His sign; and we do not blush because of it, if we also bear it in the heart. His sign is His humility. By a star the Magi knew Him;44 and this sign was given by the Lord, and it was heavenly and beautiful. He did not desire that a star should be His sign on the forehead of the faithful, but His cross. By it humbled, by it also glorified; by it He raised the humble, even by that to which He, when humbled, descended. We belong, then, to the gospel, we belong to the New Testament. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” We ask the apostle, and he says to us, since we are not under the law but under grace.45 “He sent therefore His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”46 Behold, for this end Christ came, that He might redeem those who were under the law; that now we may not be under the law, but under grace. Who, then, gave the law? He gave the law who gave likewise grace; but the law He sent by a servant, with grace He Himself came down. And in what manner were men made under the law? By not fulfilling the law. For he who fulfills the law is not under the law, but with the law; but he who is under the law is not raised up, but pressed down by the law. All men, therefore, being placed under the law, are by the law made guilty; and for this purpose it is over their head, that it may 43 Matt. xiii. 3–25. 44 Matt. ii. 2. 45 Rom. vi. 14. 46 Gal. iv. 4, 5. show sins, not take them away. The law then commands, the Giver of the law showeth pity in that which the law commands. Men, endeavoring by their own strength to fulfill that which the law commands, fell by their own rash and headstrong presumption; and not with the law, but under the law, became guilty: and since by their own strength they were unable to fulfill the law, and were become guilty under the law, they implored the aid of the Deliverer; and the guilt which the law brought caused sickness to the proud. The sickness of the proud became the confession of the humble. Now the sick confess that they are sick; let the physician come to heal the sick.

3. Who is the Physician? Our Lord Jesus Christ. Who is our Lord Jesus Christ? He who was seen even by those by whom He was crucified. He who was seized, buffeted, scourged, spit upon, crowned with thorns, suspended upon the cross, died, pierced by the spear, taken down from the cross, laid in the sepulchre. That same Jesus Christ our Lord, that same Jesus exactly, He is the complete Physician of our wounds. That crucified One at whom insults were cast, and while He hung on the cross His persecutors wagging the head, and saying, “If he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross,”47—He, and no other, is our complete Physician. Wherefore, then, did He not show to his deriders that He was the Son of God; so that if He allowed Himself to be lifted up upon the cross, at least when they said, “If he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross,” He should then come down, and show to them that He was the very Son of God whom they had dared to deride? He would not. Wherefore would He not? Was it because He could not? Manifestly He could. For which is greater, to descend from the cross or to rise from the sepulchre? But He bore with His insulters; for the cross was taken not as a proof of power, but as an example of patience. There He cured thy wounds, where He long bore His own; there He healed thee of death eternal, where He vouchsafed to die the temporal death. And did He die, or in Him did death die? What a death was that, which slew death!

4. Is it, however, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself—His whole self—who was seen, and held, and crucified? Is the whole very self that? It is the same, but not the whole, that which the Jews saw; this is not the whole Christ. And what is? “In the beginning was the Word.” In what beginning? “And the Word was with God.” And what word? “And the Word was God.” Was then perhaps this Word made by God? No. For “the same was in the beginning with God.” What then? Are the other things which God made not like unto the Word? No: because “all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made.” In what manner were all things made by Him? Because “that which was made in Him was life;” and before it was made there was life. That which was made is not life; but in the art, that is, in the wisdom of God, before it was made, it was life. That which was made passes away; that which is in wisdom cannot pass away. There was life, therefore, in that which was made. 47 Matt. xxvii. 39, 40. And what sort of life, since the soul also is the life of the body? Our body has its own life; and when it has lost it, the death of the body ensues. Was then the life such as this? No; but “the life was the light of men.” Was it the light of cattle? For this light is the light of men and of cattle. There is a certain light of men: let us see how far men differ from the cattle, and then we shall understand what is the light of men. Thou dost not differ from the cattle except in intellect; do not glory in anything besides. Dost thou presume upon thy strength? By the wild beasts thou art surpassed. Upon thy swiftness dost thou presume? By the flies thou art surpassed. Upon thy beauty dost thou presume? How great beauty is there in the feathers of a peacock! Wherein then art thou better? In the image of God. Where is the image of God? In the mind, in the intellect. If then thou art in this respect better than the cattle, that thou hast a mind by which thou mayest understand what the cattle cannot understand; and therein a man, because better than the cattle; the light of men is the light of minds. The light of minds is above minds and surpasses all minds. This was that life by which all things were made.

5. Where was it? Was it here? was it with the Father, and was it not here? or, what is more true, was it both with the Father and here also? If then it was here, wherefore was it not seen? Because “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” Oh men, be not darkness, be not unbelieving, unjust, unrighteous, rapacious, avaricious lovers of this world: for these are the darkness. The light is not absent, but you are absent from the light. A blind man in the sunshine has the sun present to him, but is himself absent from the sun. Be ye not then darkness. For this is perhaps the grace regarding which we are about to speak, that now we be no more darkness, and that the apostle may say to us, “We were sometime darkness, but now light in the Lord.”48 Because then the light of men was not seen, that is, the light of minds, there was a necessity that a man should give testimony regarding the light, who was not in darkness, but who was already enlightened; and nevertheless, because enlightened, not the light itself, “but that He might bear witness of the light.” For “he was not that light.” And what was the light? “That was the true light which enlightened every man that cometh into the world.” And where was that light? “In this world it was.” And how was it “in this world?” As the light of the sun, of the moon, and of lamps, was that light thus in the world? No. Because “the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not;” that is to say, “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” For the world is darkness; because the lovers of the world are the world. For did not the creature acknowledge its Creator? The heavens gave testimony by a star;49 the sea gave testimony, and bore its Lord when He walked upon it;50 the winds gave testimony, and were 48 Eph. v. 8. 49 Matt. ii. 2. 50 Matt. xiv. 26. quiet at His bidding;51 the earth gave testimony, and trembled when He was crucified.52 If all these gave testimony, in what sense did the world not know Him, unless that the world signifies the lovers of the world, those who with their hearts dwell in the world? And the world is evil, because the inhabitants of the world are evil; just as a house is evil, not because of its walls, but because of its inhabitants.

6. “He came unto His own;” that is to say, He came to that which belonged to Himself; “and His own received Him not.” What, then, is the hope, unless that “as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God”? If they become sons, they are born; if born, how are they born? Not of flesh, “nor of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man; but of God are they born.” Let them rejoice, therefore, that they are born of God; let them believe that they are born of God; let them receive the proof that they are born of God: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” If the Word was not ashamed to be born of man, are men ashamed to be born of God? And because He did this, He cured us; and because He cured us, we see. For this, “that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” became a medicine unto us, so that as by earth we were made blind, by earth we might be healed; and having been healed, might behold what? “And we beheld,” he says, “His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

7. “John beareth witness of Him, and crieth, saying, This was He of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is made before me.” He came after me, and He preceded me. What is it, “He is made before me”? He preceded me. Not was made before I was made, but was preferred before me, this is “He was made before me.” Wherefore was He made before thee, when He came after thee? “Because He was before me.” Before thee, O John! what great thing to be before thee! It is well that thou dost bear witness to Him; let us, however, hear Himself saying, “Even before Abraham, I am.”53 But Abraham also was born in the midst of the human race: there were many before him, many after him. Listen to the voice of the Father to the Son: “Before Lucifer I have begotten Thee.”54 He who was begotten before Lucifer Himself illuminates all. A certain one was named Lucifer, who fell; for he was an angel and became a devil; and concerning him the Scripture said, “Lucifer, who did arise in the morning, fell.”55 And why was he Lucifer? Because, being enlightened, he gave forth light. But for what reason did he become dark! Because he abode not in the truth.56 Therefore 51 Matt. xxiii. 27. 52 Matt. xxvii. 51. 53 John viii. 58. 54 Ps. cx. 3.—Vulgate. 55 Isa. xiv. 27. 56 John viii. 44. He was before Lucifer, before every one that is enlightened; since before every one that is enlightened, of necessity He must be by whom all are enlightened who can be enlightened.

8. Therefore this follows: “And of His fullness have all we received.” What have ye received? “And grace for grace.” For so run the words of the Gospel, as we find by a comparison of the Greek copies. He does not say, And of His fullness have all we received grace for grace; but thus He says: “And of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace,”—that is, have we received; so that He would wish us to understand that we have received from His fullness something unexpressed, and something besides, grace for grace. For we received of His fullness grace in the first instance; and again we received grace, grace for grace. What grace did we, in the first instance, receive? Faith: walking in faith, we walk in grace. How have we merited this? by what previous merits of ours? Let not each one flatter himself, but let him return into his own conscience, seek out the secret places of his own thoughts, recall the series of his deeds; let him not consider what he is if now he is something, but what he was that he might be something: he will find that he was not worthy of anything save punishment. If, then, thou wast worthy of punishment, and He came not to punish sins, but to forgive sins, grace was given to thee, and not reward rendered. Wherefore is it called grace? Because it is bestowed gratuitously. For thou didst not, by previous merits, purchase that which thou didst receive. This first grace, then, the sinner received, that his sins were forgiven. What did he deserve? Let him interrogate justice, he finds punishment; let him interrogate mercy, he finds grace. But God promised this also through the prophets; therefore, when He came to give what He had promised, He not only gave grace, but also truth. How was truth exhibited? Because that was done which had been promised.

9. What, then, is “grace for grace”? By faith we render God favorable to us; and inasmuch as we were not worthy to have our sins forgiven, and because we, who were unworthy, received so great a benefit, it is called grace. What is grace? That which is freely given. What is “freely given”? Given, not paid. If it was due, wages were given, not grace bestowed; but if it was reply due, thou wast good; but if, as is true, thou wast evil, but didst believe on Him who justifieth the ungodly57 (What is, Who justifieth the ungodly? Of the ungodly maketh pious), consider what did by right hang over thee by the law, and what thou hast obtained by grace. But having obtained that grace of faith, thou shalt be just by faith (for the just lives by faith);58 and thou shalt obtain favor of God by living by faith. And having obtained favor from God by living by faith, thou shalt receive immortality as a reward, and life eternal. And that is grace. For because of what merit dost thou receive life eternal? Because of grace. For if faith is grace, life eternal is, as it were, the wages of faith: God, indeed, appears to bestow 57 Rom. iv. 5. 58 Hab. ii. 4; Rom. i. 17. eternal life as if it were due (To whom due? To the faithful, because he had merited it by faith); but because faith itself is grace, life eternal also is grace for grace.

10. Listen to the Apostle Paul acknowledging grace, and afterwards desiring the payment of a debt. What acknowledgment of grace is there in Paul? “Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious; but I obtained,” saith he, “mercy.”59 He said that he who obtained it was unworthy; that he had, however, obtained it, not through his own merits, but through the mercy of God. Listen to him now demanding the payment of a debt, who had first received unmerited grace: “For,” saith he, “I am now ready to be offered up, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” 60 Now he demands a debt, he exacts what is due. For consider the following words: “Which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall render unto me in that day.” That he might in the former instance receive grace, he stood in need of a merciful Father; for the reward of grace, of a just judge. Will He who did not condemn the ungodly man condemn the faithful man? And yet, if thou dost rightly consider, it was He who first gave thee faith, whereby thou didst obtain favor; for not of thine own didst thou so obtain favor that anything should be due to thee. Wherefore, then, in afterwards bestowing the reward of immortality, He crowns His own gifts, not thy merits. Therefore, brethren, “we all of His fullness have received;” of the fullness of His mercy, of the abundance of His goodness have we received. What? The remission of sins that we might be justified by faith. And what besides? “And grace for grace;” that is, for this grace by which we live by faith we shall receive another grace. What, then, is it except grace? For if I shall say that this also is due, I attribute something to myself as if to me it were due. But God crowns in us the gifts of His own mercy; but on condition that we walk with perseverance in that grace which in the first instance we received

11. “For the law was given by Moses;” which law held the guilty. For what saith the apostle? “The law entered that the offense might abound.” It was a benefit to the proud that the offense abounded, for they gave much to themselves, and, as it were, attributed much to their own strength; and they were unable to fulfill righteousness without the aid of Him who had commanded it. God, desirous to subdue their pride, gave the law, as if saying: Behold, fulfill, and do not think that there is One wanting to command. One to command is not wanting, but one to fulfill.

12. If, then, there is one wanting to fulfill, whence does he not fulfill? Because born with the heritage of sin and death. Born of Adam, he drew with him that which was there conceived. The first man fell, and all who were born of him from him derived the concupiscence of the flesh. It was needful that another man should be born who derived no concupiscence. 59 1 Tim. i. 13. 60 2 Tim. iv. 6–8. A man and a man: a man to death and a man to life. Thus saith the apostle: “Since, indeed, by man death, by man also the resurrection of the dead.” By which man death, and by which man the resurrection of the dead? Do not make haste: he goes on to say, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”61 Who belong to Adam? All who are born of Adam. Who to Christ? All who were born through Christ. Wherefore all in sin? Because no one was born except through Adam. But that they were born of Adam was of necessity, arising from damnation; to be born through Christ is of will and grace. Men are not compelled to be born through Christ: not because they wished were they born of Adam. All, however, who are of Adam are sinners with sin: all who are through Christ are justified, and just not in themselves, but in Him. For in themselves, if thou shouldest ask, they belong to Adam: in Him, if thou shouldest ask, they belong to Christ. Wherefore? Because He, the Head, our Lord Jesus Christ, did not come with the heritage of sin; but He came nevertheless with mortal flesh.

13. Death was the punishment of sins; in the Lord was the gift of mercy, not the punishment of sin. For the Lord had nothing on account of which He should justly die. He Himself says, “Behold, the prince of this world cometh, and findeth nothing in me.” Wherefore then dost Thou die? “But that all may know that I do the will of my Father, arise, let us go hence.”62 He had not in Himself any reason why He should die, and He died: thou hast such a reason, and dost thou refuse to die? Do not refuse to bear with an equal mind thy desert, when He did not refuse to suffer, to deliver thee from eternal death. A man and a man; but the one nothing but man, the other God-man. The one a man of sin, the other of righteousness. Thou didst die in Adam, rise in Christ; for both are due to thee. Now thou hast believed in Christ, render nevertheless that which thou owest through Adam. But the chain of sin shall not hold thee eternally; because the temporal death of thy Lord slew thine eternal death. The same is grace, my brethren, the same is truth, because promised and manifested.

14. This grace was not in the Old Testament, because the law threatened, did not bring aid; commanded, did not heal; made manifest, but did not take away our feebleness: but it prepared the way for that Physician who was to come with grace and truth; as a physician who, about to come to any one to cure him, might first send his servant that he might find the sick man bound. He was not sound; he did not wish to be made sound and lest he should be made sound, he boasted that he was so. The law was sent, it bound him; he finds himself accused, now, he exclaims against the bandage. The Lord comes, cures with somewhat bitter and sharp medicines: for He says to the sick, Bear; He says, Endure; He says, Love not the world, have patience, let the fire of continence cure thee, let thy wounds endure the sword of persecutions. Wert thou greatly terrified although bound? He, free and unbound, drank 61 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. 62 John xiv. 30, 31. what He gave to thee; He first suffered that He might console thee, saying, as it were, that which thou fearest to suffer for thyself, I first suffer for thee. This is grace, and great grace. Who can praise it in a worthy manner?

15. I speak, my brethren, regarding the humility of Christ. Who can speak regarding the majesty of Christ, and the divinity of Christ? In explaining and speaking of the humility of Christ, to do so in any fashion we find ourselves not sufficient, indeed wholly insufficient: we commend Him entire to your thoughts, we do not endeavor to fill Him up to your hearing. Consider the humility of Christ. But who, thou sayest, may explain it to us, unless thou declare it? Let Him declare it within. Better does He declare it who dwelleth within, than he who crieth without. Let Himself show to you the grace of His humility, who has begun to dwell in your hearts. But now, if in explaining and setting forth His humility we are deficient, who can speak of His majesty? If “the Word made flesh” disturbs us, who shall explain “In the beginning was the Word”? Keep hold then, brethren, upon the entireness of Christ.

16. “The law was given by Moses: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” By a servant was the law given, and made men guilty: by an Emperor was pardon given, and delivered the guilty. “The law was given by Moses.” Let not the servant attribute to himself more than was done through him. Chosen to a great ministry as one faithful in his house, but yet a servant, he is able to act according to the law, but cannot release from the guilt of the law. “The law,” then, “was given by Moses: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

17. And lest, perhaps, any one should say, And did not grace and truth come through Moses, who saw God, immediately he adds, “No one hath seen God at any time.” And how did God become known to Moses? Because the Lord revealed Himself to His servant. What Lord? The same Christ, who sent the law beforehand by His servant, that He might Himself come with grace and truth. “For no one hath seen God at any time.” And whence did He appear to that servant as far as he was able to receive Him? But “the Only-begotten,” he says, “who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” What signifieth “in the bosom of the Father?” In the secret of the Father. For God has not a bosom, as we have, in our garments, nor is He to be thought of sitting, as we do, nor is He girt with a girdle so as to have a bosom; but because our bosom is within, the secret of the Father is called the bosom of the Father. And He who knew the Father, being in the secret of the Father, He declared Him. “For no man hath seen God at any time.” He then came and narrated whatever He saw. What did Moses see? Moses saw a cloud, he saw an angel, he saw a fire. All that is the creature: it bore the type of its Lord, but did not manifest the presence of the Lord Himself. For thou hast it plainly stated in the law: “And Moses spake with the Lord face to face, as a friend with his friend.”63 Following the same scripture, thou findest Moses saying: “If I have 63 Ex. xxxiii. 11, 13, 20. found grace in Thy sight, show me Thyself plainly, that I may see Thee.” And it is little that he said this: he received the reply, “Thou canst not see my face.” An angel then spake with Moses, my brethren, bearing the type of the Lord; and all those things which were done by the angel promised that future grace and truth. Those who examine the law well know this; and when we have opportunity to speak somewhat of this matter also, we shall not fail to speak to you, beloved brethren, as far as the Lord may reveal to us.

18. But know this, that all those things which were seen in bodily form were not that substance of God. For we saw those things with the eyes of the flesh: how is the substance of God seen? Interrogate the Gospel: “Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.”64 There have been men who, deceived by the vanity of their hearts, have said, The Father is invisible, but the Son is visible. How visible? If on account of His flesh, because He took flesh, the matter is manifest. For of those who saw the flesh of Christ, some believed, some crucified; and those who believed doubted when He was crucified; and unless they had touched the flesh after the resurrection, their faith would not have been recalled. If, then, on account of His flesh the Son was visible, that we also grant, and it is the Catholic faith; but if before He took flesh, as they say, that is, before He became incarnate, they are greatly deluded, and grievously err. For those visible and bodily appearances took place though the creature, in which a type might be exhibited: not in any fashion was the substance itself shown and made manifest. Give heed, beloved brethren, to this easy proof. The wisdom of God cannot be beheld by the eyes. Brethren, if Christ is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God;65 if Christ is the Word of God, and if the word of man is not seen with the eyes, can the Word of God be so seen?

19. Expel, therefore, from your hearts carnal thoughts, that you may be really under grace, that you may belong to the New Testament. Therefore is life eternal promised in the New Testament. Read the Old Testament, and see that the same things were enjoined upon a people yet carnal as upon us. For to worship one God is also enjoined upon us. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” is also enjoined upon us, which is the second commandment. “Observe the Sabbath-day” is enjoined on us more than on them, because it is commanded to be spiritually observed. For the Jews observe the Sabbath in a servile manner, using it for luxuriousness and drunkenness. How much better would their women be employed in spinning wool than in dancing on that day in the balconies? God forbid, brethren, that we should call that an observance of the Sabbath. The Christian observes the Sabbath spiritually, abstaining from servile work. For what is it to abstain from servile work? From sin. And how do we prove it? Ask the Lord. “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.”66 Therefore is the spiritual observance of the Sabbath enjoined upon us. 64 Matt. v. 8. 65 1 Cor. i. 24. 66 John viii. 34. Now all those commandments are more enjoined on us, and are to be observed: “Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honor thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”67 Are not all these things enjoined upon us also? But ask what is the reward, and thou wilt find it there said: “That thine enemies may be driven forth before thy face, and that you may receive the land which God promised to your fathers.” 68 Because they were not able to comprehend invisible things, they were held by the visible. Wherefore held? Lest they should perish altogether, and slip into idol-worship. For they did this, my brethren, as we read, forgetful of the great miracles which God performed before their eyes. The sea was divided; a way was made in the midst of the waves; their enemies following, were covered by the same waves through which they passed:69 and yet when Moses, the man of God, had departed from their sight, they asked for an idol, and said, “Make us gods to go before us; for this man has deserted us.” Their whole hope was placed in man, not in God. Behold, the man is dead: was God dead who had rescued them from the land of Egypt? And when they had made to themselves the image of a calf, they offered it adoration, and said, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which delivered thee out of the land of Egypt.” 70 How soon forgetful of such manifest grace! By what means could such a people be held except by carnal promises?

20. The same things are commanded in the Decalogue as we are commanded to observe; but the same promises are not made as to us. What is promised to us? Life eternal. “And this is life eternal, that they know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”71 The knowledge of God is promised: that is, grace for grace. Brethren, we now believe, we do not see; for faith the reward will be to see what we believe. The prophets knew this, but it was concealed before He came. For a certain lover sighing, says in the Psalms: “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after.” And dost thou ask what he seeks? For perhaps he seeks a land flowing with milk and honey carnally, although this is to be spiritually sought and desired; or perhaps the subjection of his enemies, or the death of foes, or the power and riches of this world. For he glows with love, and sighs greatly, and burns and pants. Let us see what he desires: “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after.” What is it that he doth seek after? “That I may dwell,” saith he, “in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” And suppose that thou dwellest in the house of the Lord, 67 Ex. xx. 3–17. 68 Lev. xxvi. 1–13. 69 Ex. xiv. 21–31. 70 Ex. xxxii. 1–4. 71 John xvii. 3. from what source will thy joy there be derived? “That I may behold,” saith he, “the beauty of the Lord.”72

21. My brethren, wherefore do you cry out, wherefore do you exult, wherefore do you love, unless that a spark of this love is there? What do you desire? I ask you. Can it be seen with the eyes? Can it be touched? Is it some fairness which delights the eyes? Are not the martyrs vehemently beloved; and when we commemorate them do we not burn with love? What is it that we love in them, brethren? Limbs torn by wild beasts? What is more revolting if thou askest the eyes of the flesh? what more fair if thou askest the eyes of the heart? How appears in your eyes a very fair young man who is a thief? How shocked are your eyes! Are the eyes of the flesh shocked? If you interrogate them, nothing is more shapely and better formed than that body; the symmetry of the limbs and the beauty of the color attract the eyes; and yet, when thou hearest that he is a thief, your mind recoils from the man. Thou beholdest on the other hand a bent old man, leaning upon a staff, scarcely moving himself, ploughed all over with wrinkles. Thou hearest that he is just: thou lovest and embracest him. Such are the rewards promised to us, my brethren: love such, sigh after such a kingdom, desire such a country, if you wish to arrive at that with which our Lord came, that is, at grace and truth. But if you covet bodily rewards from God, thou art still under the law, and therefore thou shalt not fulfill the law. For when thou seest those temporal things granted to those who offend God, thy steps falter, and thou sayest to thyself: Behold, I worship God, daily I run to church, my knees are worn with prayers, and yet I am constantly sick: there are men who commit murders, who are guilty of robberies, and yet they exult and have abundance; it is well with them. Was it such things that thou soughtest from God? Surely thou didst belong to grace. If, therefore, God gave to thee grace, because He gave freely, love freely. Do not for the sake of reward love God; let Him be the reward. Let thy soul say, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may behold the beauty of the Lord.” Do not fear that thine enjoyment will fail through satiety: such will be that enjoyment of beauty that it will ever be present to thee, and thou shalt never be satisfied; indeed thou shalt be always satisfied, and yet never satisfied. For if I shall say that thou shalt not be satisfied, it will mean famine; and if I shall say thou shalt be satisfied, I fear satiety: where neither satiety nor famine are, I know not what to say; but God has that which He can manifest to those who know not how to express it, yet believe that they shall receive.

Chapter I. 19–33

You have very often heard, holy brethren, and you know well, that John the Baptist, in proportion as he was greater than those born of women, and was more humble in his acknowledgment of the Lord, obtained the grace of being the friend of the Bridegroom; zealous for the Bridegroom, not for himself; not seeking his own honor, but that of his Judge, whom as a herald he preceded. Therefore, to the prophets who went before, it was granted to predict concerning Christ; but to this man, to point Him out with the finger. For as Christ was unknown by those who did not believe the prophets before He came, He remained unknown to them even when present. For He had come humbly and concealed from the first; the more concealed in proportion as He was more humble: but the people, despising in their pride the humility of God, crucified their Saviour, and made Him their condemner.

2. But will not He who at first came con cealed, because humble, come again manifested, because exalted? You have just listened to the Psalm: “God shall come manifestly, and our God shall not keep silence.”73 He was silent that He might be judged, He will not be silent when He begins to judge. It would not have been said, “He will come manifestly,” unless at first He had come concealed; nor would it have been said, “He shall not keep silence,” unless He had first kept silence. How was He silent? Interrogate Isaiah: “He was brought as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearer was dumb, so He opened not His mouth.”74 “But He shall come manifestly, and shall not keep silence.” In what manner “manifestly”? “A fire shall go before Him, and round about Him a strong tempest.”75 That tempest has to carry away all the chaff from the floor, which is now being threshed; and the fire has to burn what the tempest carries away. But now He is silent; silent in judgment, but not silent in precept. For if Christ is silent, what is the purpose of these Gospels? what the purpose of the voices of the apostles, what of the canticles of the Psalms, what of the declarations of the prophets? In all these Christ is not silent. But now He is silent in not taking vengeance: He is not silent in not giving warning. But He will come in glory to take vengeance, and will manifest Himself even to all who do not believe on Him. But now, because when present He was concealed, it behoved that He should be despised. For unless He had been despised, He would not have been crucified; if He had not been crucified, He would not have shed His blood—the price by which He redeemed us. But that He might give a price for us, He was crucified; that He might be crucified, He was despised; that He might be despised, He appeared in humility.

We have arrived, as the Lord hath willed it, to the day of our promise. He will grant this also, that we may arrive at the fulfillment of the promise. For then those things which we say, if they are useful to us and to you, are from Him; but those things which proceed from man are false, as our Lord Jesus Christ Himself has said, “He that speaketh a lie speaketh of his own.”90 No one has anything of his own except falsehood and sin. But if man has any truth and justice, it is from that fountain after which we ought to thirst in this desert, so that being, as it were, bedewed by some drops from it, and comforted in the meantime in this pilgrimage, we may not fail by the way, but reach His rest and satisfying fullness. If then “he that speaketh a lie speaketh of his own,” he who speaketh the truth speaketh of God. John is true, Christ is the Truth; John is true, but every true man is true from the Truth. If, then, John is true, and a man cannot be true except from the Truth, from whom was he true, unless from Him who said, “I am the truth”?91 The Truth, then, could not speak contrary to the true man, or the true man contrary to the Truth. The Truth sent the true man, and he was true because sent by the Truth. If it was the Truth that sent John, then it was Christ that sent him. But that which Christ does with the Father, the Father does; and what the Father does with Christ, Christ does. The Father does nothing apart from the Son, nor the Son anything apart from the Father: inseparable love, inseparable unity: inseparable majesty, inseparable power, according to these words which He Himself propounded, “I and my Father are one.”92 Who then sent John? If we say the Father, we speak truly; if we say the Son, we speak truly; but to speak more plainly, we say the Father and the Son. But whom the Father and the Son sent, one God sent; because the Son said, “I and the Father are one.” How, then, did he not know Him by whom he was sent? For he said, “I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me.” I interrogate John: “Who sent thee to baptize with water? what did He say to thee?” “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending as a dove, and abiding upon Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.” Is it this, O John, that He said to thee who sent thee? It is manifest that it was this; who, then, sent thee? Perhaps the Father. True God is the Father, and the Truth is God the Son: if the Father without the Son sent thee, God without the Truth sent thee; but if thou art true, because thou dost speak the truth, and dost speak of the Truth, the Father did not send thee without the Son, but the Father and the Son together sent thee. If, then, the Son sent thee with the Father, how didst thou not know Him by whom thou wast sent? 90 John viii. 44. 91 John xiv. 6. 92 John x. 30. He whom thou hadst seen in the Truth, Himself sent thee that He might be recognized in the flesh, and said, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending as a dove, and abiding upon Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.”

2. Did John hear this that he might know Him whom he had not known, or that he might more fully know Him whom he had already known? For if he had been entirely ignorant of Him, he would not have said to Him when He came to the river to be baptized, “I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?”93 He knew Him therefore. But when did the dove descend? When the Lord had been baptized, and was ascending from the water. But if He who sent Him said, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending as a dove, and abiding upon Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost,” and he knew Him not, but when the dove descended he learned to know Him, and the time at which the dove descended was when the Lord was going up from the water; but John had known the Lord, when the Lord came to him to the water: it is made plain to us that John after a manner knew, and after a manner did not at first know the Lord. And unless we understand it so, he was a liar. How was he true acknowledging the Lord and saying, “Comest Thou to me to be baptized,” and, “I have need to be baptized of Thee”? Is he true when he said this? And how is he again true when he saith, “I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending as a dove, and abiding upon Him, the same is He who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost”? The Lord was made known by a dove, not to him who knew Him not, but to him who in a manner knew Him, and in a manner knew Him not. It is for us to discover what, in Him, John did not know, and learned by the dove.

3. Why was John sent baptizing? Already, I recollect, I have explained that to you, beloved, according to my ability. For if the baptism of John was necessary for our salvation, it ought even now to be used. For we cannot think that men are not saved now, or that more are not saved now, or that there was one salvation then, another now. If Christ has been changed, the salvation has also been changed; if salvation is in Christ, and Christ Himself is the same, there is the same salvation to us. But why was John sent baptizing? Because it behoved Christ to be baptized. Wherefore did it behove Christ to be baptized? Wherefore did it behove Christ to be born? Wherefore did it behove Christ to be crucified? For if He had come to point out the way of humility, and to make Himself the way of humility; in all things had humility to be fulfilled by Him. He deigned from this to give authority to His own baptism, that His servants might know with what alacrity they ought to run to the baptism of the Lord, when He Himself did not refuse to receive the baptism of a servant. This favor was bestowed upon John that it should be called his baptism.

1. I Confess to you, holy brethren, I was afraid the cold would have made you cold in assembling yourselves together; but since you prove by this, your crowded assembly, that you are fervent in spirit, I doubt not that you have also prayed for me, that I may pay you what I owe. For I promised you in the name of Christ that, as the shortness of the time prevented us from expounding it before, I would to-day discuss why God was pleased to manifest the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. That this may be explained, this day has dawned on us; and I perceive that from eagerness to hear, and pious devotion, you have come together in greater number than usual. May God, by our mouth, fulfill your expectation. For your coming together is of your love; but love of what? If of us, even that is well; for we desire to be loved by you, but not in ourselves. Because we love you in Christ, do you love us in Christ in return, and let our love mutually sigh towards God; for the note of the dove is a sighing or moaning.

2. Now if the dove’s note is a moaning, as we all know it to be, and doves moan in love, hear what the apostle says, and wonder not that the Holy Ghost willed to be manifested in the form of a dove: “For what we should pray for as we ought,” says he, “we know not; but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”116 What then, my brethren? shall we say this, that the Spirit groans where He has perfect and eternal blessedness with the Father and the Son? For the Holy Spirit is God, even as the Son of God is God, and the Father God. I have said “God” thrice, but not three Gods; for indeed it is God thrice rather than three Gods; because the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one God: this you know full well. It is not then in Himself with Himself in that Trinity, in that blessedness, in that His eternal substance, that the Holy Spirit groans; but in us He groans because He makes us to groan. Nor is it a little matter that the Holy Spirit teaches us to groan, for He gives us to know that we are sojourners in a foreign land, and He teaches us to sigh after our native country; and through that very longing do we groan. He with whom it is well in this world, or rather he who thinks it is well with him, who exults in the joy of carnal things, in the abundance of things temporal, in an empty felicity, has the cry of the raven; for the raven’s cry is full of clamor, not of groaning. But he who knows that he is in the pressure of this mortal life, a pilgrim “absent from the Lord,”117 that he does not yet possess that perpetual blessedness which is promised to us, but that he has it in hope, and will have it in reality when the Lord shall come openly in glory who came before in humility concealed; he, I say, who knows this doth groan. And so long as it is for this he 116 Rom. viii. 26. 117 2 Cor. v. 6. groans, he does well to groan; it was the Spirit that taught him to groan, he learnt it from the dove. Many indeed groan by reason of earthly misery. They are shattered, it may be, by losses, or weighed down by bodily ailment, or shut up in prisons, or bound with chains, or tossed about on the waves of the sea, or hedged in by the ensnaring devices of their enemies. Therefore do they groan, but not with the moaning of the dove, not with love of God, not in the Spirit. Accordingly, when such are delivered from these same afflictions, they exult with loud voices, whereby it is made manifest that they are ravens, not doves. It was with good reason that a raven was sent forth from the ark, and returned not again; a dove was sent forth, and it returned. These two birds Noah sent forth.118 He had there the raven, and also the dove. That ark contained both kinds; and if the ark was a figure of the Church, you see indeed that in the present deluge of the world, the Church must of necessity contain both kinds, as well the raven as the dove. Who are the ravens? They who seek their own. Who are the doves? They who seek the things that are Christ’s.119

3. Therefore, when He sent the Holy Spirit He manifested Him visibly in two ways—by a dove and by fire: by a dove upon the Lord when He was baptized, by fire upon the disciples when they were gathered together. For when the Lord had ascended into heaven after His resurrection, having spent forty days with His disciples, and the day of Pentecost being fully come, He sent unto them the Holy Spirit as He had promised. Accordingly the Spirit coming at that time filled the place, and there was first a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, and “there appeared unto them,” it says, “cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they began to speak with tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”120 Here we have seen a dove descending upon the Lord; there, cloven tongues upon the assembled disciples: in the former, simplicity is shown; in the latter, fervency. Now there are who are said to be simple, who are only indolent; they are called simple, but they are only slow. Not such was Stephen, full of the Holy Ghost: he was simple, because he injured no one; he was fervent, because he reproved the ungodly. For he held not his peace before the Jews. His are those burning words: “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised of heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit.” Mighty impetuosity; but it is the dove without gall raging. For that you know that he was fierce without gall, see how, upon hearing these words, they who were the ravens immediately took up stones and rushed together upon this dove. They begin to stone Stephen; and he who a little before stormed and glowed with ardor of spirit,—who had, as it were, made an onset on his enemies, and like one full of violence had attacked them in such fiery and burning words as you have heard, “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears,” that any one who heard those 118 Gen. viii. 6, 9. 119 Phil. ii. 21. 120 Acts ii. 1, 4. words might fancy that Stephen, if he were allowed, would have them consumed at once,—but when the stones thrown from their hands reached him, with fixed knee he saith, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”121 He held fast to the unity of the dove. For his Master, upon whom the dove descended, had done the same thing before him; who, while hanging on the cross, said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”122 Wherefore by the dove it is shown that they who are sanctified by the Spirit should be without guile; and that their simplicity should not continue cold is shown us by the fire. Nor let it trouble you that the tongues were divided; for tongues are diverse, therefore the appearance was that of cloven tongues. “Cloven tongues,” it saith, “as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.” There is a diversity of tongues, but the diversity of tongues does not imply schisms. Be not afraid of separation in the cloven tongues; in the dove recognize unity.

4. Hence in this manner it behoved the Holy Spirit to be manifested when coming upon the Lord, that every one might understand that if he has the Holy Spirit he ought to be simple as the dove, to have true peace with his brethren, that peace which the kisses of doves signify. Ravens have their kisses too; but in the case of the ravens it is a false peace, in that of the dove a true peace. Not every one, therefore, who says, “Peace be with you,” is to be listened to as if he were a dove. How then are the kisses of ravens distinguished from those of doves? Ravens kiss, but they tear; the nature of doves is innocent of tearing. Where consequently there is tearing, there is not true peace in the kisses. They have true peace who have not torn the Church. Ravens feed upon carrion, it is not so with the dove; it lives on the fruits of the earth, its food is innocent. This, brethren, is really worthy of admiration in the dove. Sparrows are very small birds, but yet they kill flies at least. The dove does nothing of this sort, for it does not feed on what is dead. They who have torn the Church feed on the dead. God is mighty; let us pray that they who are devoured by them, and perceive it not, may come to life again. Many acknowledge that they do come to life again, for at their coming we daily express joy with them in the name of Christ. Be ye simple, but only in such wise that ye be fervent, and let your fervor be in your tongues. Hold not your peace, speak with glowing tongues, set those that are cold on fire.

5. For why, my brethren? Who does not see what they do not? And no wonder; for they who are unwilling to return from that are just like the raven that was sent forth from the ark. For who does not see what they see not? They are unthankful even to the Holy Spirit Himself. See, the dove descended upon the Lord, upon the Lord when baptized: and thereupon was manifested that holy and real Trinity, which to us is one God. For the Lord went up out of the water, as we read in the Gospel: “And, lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and it abode upon Him: and immediately 121 Acts vii. 51–59. 122 Luke xxiii. 34. a voice followed, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”123 The Trinity most manifestly appears: the Father in the voice, the Son in the man, the Spirit in the dove. In this Trinity let us see, as we do see, whereunto the apostles were sent forth, and what it is wonderful those men do not see. Not indeed that they really do not see, but that they really shut their eyes to that which strikes them in the very face: that whereunto the disciples were sent forth in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by Him of whom it is said, “This is He that baptizeth:” it was said, in fact, to His ministers, by Him who has retained this authority to Himself.

6. Now this it was in Him that John saw, and came to know which he did not know. Not that he did not know Him to be the Son of God, or that he did not know Him to be the Lord, or not know Him to be the Christ; or that he did not know this too, that it was He who should baptize with water and with the Holy Ghost. This he did know; but that he should do this so as to retain the authority to Himself and transfer it to none of His ministers, this is what he learnt in the dove. For by this authority, which Christ has retained to Himself alone, and conferred upon none of His ministers, though He has deigned to baptize by His ministers; by this authority, I say, stands the unity of the Church, which is figured in the dove, concerning which it is said, “My dove is one, the only one of her mother.”124 For if, as I have already said, my brethren, the authority were transferred by the Lord to His minister, there would be as many baptisms as ministers, and the unity of baptism would no longer exist.

7. Mark, brethren; before our Lord Jesus Christ came to His baptism (for it was after the baptism that the dove descended, whereby John recognized something that was peculiar to Him, since he was told, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending like a dove, and remaining on Him, the same is He that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost”), John knew that He it was that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost; but that it should be with this peculiarity, that the authority should not pass from Him to another, notwithstanding He confers it, this is what he learnt there. And whence do we prove that John did already know that the Lord was to baptize with the Holy Ghost; so that what he must be understood to have learned by the dove is, that the Lord was to baptize with the Holy Ghost in such wise that the authority should not pass from Him to any other man? Whence do we prove this? The dove descended after the Lord was baptized; but before the Lord came to be baptized by John in the Jordan, we have said that John knew Him, on the evidence of those words, in which he says, “Comest Thou to me to be baptized? I have need to be baptized of Thee.” Well, he did know Him to be the Lord, knew Him to be the Son of God; how do we prove that he knew already that the same was He who should baptize with the Holy Ghost? Before He came to the river, 123 Matt. iii. 16. 124 Cant. vi. 8. whilst many people were running together to John to be baptized, he says to them, “I indeed baptize you with water; but He that cometh after me is greater than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to loose; the same shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.”125 Already he knew this also. What then did he learn from the dove, that he may not afterwards be found a liar (which God forbid we should think), if it be not this, that there was to be a certain peculiarity in Christ, such that, although many ministers, be they righteous or unrighteous, should baptize, the virtue of baptism would be attributed to Him alone on whom the dove descended, and of whom it was said, “This is He that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost”? Peter may baptize, but this is He that baptizeth; Paul may baptize, yet this is He that baptizeth; Judas may baptize, still this is He that baptizeth.

8. For if the sanctity of baptism be according to the diversity of merits in them that administer it, then as merits are diverse there will be diverse baptisms; and the recipient will imagine that what he receives is so much the better, the better he appears to be from whom he received it. The saints themselves—understand brethren, they that belong to the dove, that have their part in that city of Jerusalem, the good themselves in the Church, of whom the apostle says, “The Lord know eth them that are His”126—are endued with different graces, and do not all possess like merits. Some are more holy than others, some are better than others. Therefore if one receive baptism from him, for example, who is a righteous saint, another from another who is of inferior merit with God, of inferior degree, of inferior continence, of inferior life, how notwithstanding is that which they receive one, equal and like, if it be not because, “This is He that baptizeth”? Just, then, as when the good and the better administer baptism, one man does not receive a good thing, another a better; but, notwithstanding that the ministers were one good the other better, they receive what is one and equal, not a better in the one case and a worse in the other; so, too, when a bad man administers baptism, through the ignorance or forbearance of the Church (for bad men either are not known as such, or are borne with; the chaff is tolerated until the floor be fully purged at the last), that which is given is one, not unlike because the ministers are unlike, but like and equal because “This is He that baptizeth.”

9. Therefore, beloved, let us see what those men desire not to see; not what they may not see, but what they grieve to see, as though it were shut against them. Whither were the disciples sent to baptize as ministers, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost? Whither were they sent? “Go,” said He, “baptize the nations.” You have heard, brethren, how that inheritance comes, “Ask of me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance, and the utmost bounds of the earth for Thy possessions.”127 You have heard 125 Matt. iii. 14. 126 2 Tim. ii. 19. 127 Ps. ii. 8. how that “from Sion went forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”128 For it was there the disciples were told, “Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”129 We became attentive when we heard, “Go, baptize the nations.” In whose name? “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” This is one God; for it says not in the “names” of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, but “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Where thou hearest one name, there is one God; just as it was said of Abraham’s seed, and the Apostle Paul expounds it, “In thy seed shall all nations be blessed; he said not, In seeds, as in many, but as in one, and in thy seed which is Christ.”130 Wherefore, just as the apostle wished to show thee that, because in that place it is not said “in seeds,” Christ is one; so here too, when it is said, “in the name,” not in the names, even as these, “in seed,” not in seeds, is it proved that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one God.

10. But lo, say the disciples to the Lord, we are told in what name we are to baptize; Thou hast made us ministers, and hast said to us, “Go, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Whither shall we go? Whither? Have you not heard? To Mine inheritance. You ask, Whither shall we go? To that which I bought with my blood. Whither then? To the nations, saith He. I fancied that He said, Go, baptize the Africans in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Thanks be to God, the Lord has solved the question the dove has taught us. Thanks be to God, it was to the nations the apostles were sent; if to the nations, then to all tongues. The Holy Spirit signified this, being divided in the tongues, united in the dove. Here the tongues are divided, there the dove unites them. The tongues of the nations agreed, perhaps that of Africa alone disagreed. What can be more evident, my brethren? In the dove the unity, in the tongues the community of the nations. For once the tongues became discordant through pride, and then of one became many tongues. For after the flood certain proud men, as if endeavoring to fortify themselves against God, as if aught were high for God, or aught could give security to pride, raised a tower, apparently that they might not be destroyed by a flood, should there come one thereafter. For they had heard and considered that all iniquity was swept away by a flood; to abstain from iniquity they would not; they sought the height of a tower as a defense against a flood; they built a lofty tower. “God saw their pride, and frustrated their purpose by causing that they should not understand one another’s speech, and thus tongues became diverse through pride.”131 If pride caused diversities of tongues, Christ’s humility has united these diversities in one. The Church is now bringing together what that tower had sundered. 128 Isa. ii. 3. 129 Matt. xxviii. 19. 130 Gen. xxii. 18; Gal. iii. 16. 131 Gen. xi. 1–9. Of one tongue there were made many; marvel not: this was the doing of pride. Of many tongues there is made one; marvel not: this was the doing of charity. For although the sounds of tongues are various, in the heart one God is invoked, one peace preserved. How then should the Holy Spirit have been manifested when signifying a unity, if not by the dove, so that it might be said to the Church brought into a state of peace, “My dove is one”? How ought humility to have been represented but by an innocent, sorrowing bird; not by a proud, exulting bird like the raven?

11. But perhaps they will say: Well, as it is a dove, and the dove is one, baptism there cannot be apart from the one dove. Therefore if the dove is with thee, or if thou be thyself a dove, do thou give me, when I come to thee, that which I have not. You know that this is what they say; but you will presently see that it is not of the voice of the dove, but of the clamor of the raven. For attend a little, beloved, and fear their devices; nay, beware of them, and listen to the words of gainsayers only to reject them, not to swallow them and take them into your bowels. Do therein what the Lord did when they offered Him the bitter draught, “He tasted, and spat it out;”132 so also you hear and cast away. What indeed say they? Let us see. Lo, says he, “Thou art the dove.” O Catholic Church, it is to thee it is said, “My dove is one, the only one of her mother,” to thee certainly is it said. Stop, do not question me; prove first whether to me it was said; if it was said to me, I would hear it at once. “To thee,” saith he, “it was said.” I answer, in the voice of the Catholic Church, “To me.” And this answer, brethren, sounding forth from my mouth alone, has sounded, as I believe, also from your hearts, and we all affirmed together, yea, to the Catholic Church was it said, “One is my dove, the only one of her mother.” Apart from this dove, says he further, there is no baptism: I was baptized apart from this dove, consequently have not baptism; if I have not baptism, why dost thou not give it me when I come to thee?

12. I also will put questions; let us meanwhile lay aside the inquiry as to whom this was said, “My dove is one, the only one of her mother;”—as yet we are inquiring;—it was said either to me or to thee; let us postpone the question as to whom it was said. This is what I ask, if the dove is simple, innocent, without gall, peaceful in its kisses, not fierce with its talons, I ask whether the covetous, the rapacious, the crafty, the sottish, the infamous, belong to the members of this dove? Are they members of this dove? Far be the thought, says he. And who would really say this, brethren? To speak of nothing else, if I mention the rapacious alone, members of the hawk they may be, not members of the dove. Kites seize and plunder, so do hawks, so do ravens; doves do not plunder nor tear, consequently they who snatch and rob are not members of the dove. Was there not even one rapacious person among you? Why abides the baptism, which in this case the hawk, not the dove, has given? Why do you not among yourselves baptize after robbers, after adulterers, after drunkards? Why not 132 Matt. xxvii. 34. baptize after the avaricious among yourselves? Are these all members of the dove? You so dishonor your dove that you make those that have the nature of the vulture her members. What, then, brethren, what say we? There are the bad and the good in the Catholic Church, but with them the bad only. But perhaps I say this with a hostile feeling: let this too be afterwards examined. They do say, certainly, that among them are the good and the bad; for, should they assert that they have only the good, let their own credit it, and I subscribe. With us, let them say, there are none but holy, righteous, chaste, sober men; no adulterers, no usurers, no deceivers, no false swearers, no wine-bibbers;—let them say this, for I heed not their tongues, I touch their hearts. But since they are well known to us, and to you, and to their own, just as you are known both to yourselves in the Catholic Church and to them, neither let us find fault with them, nor let them flatter themselves. We confess that in the Church there are good and bad, yet as the grain and the chaff. Sometimes he who is baptized by the grain is chaff, and he who is baptized by the chaff is grain. Otherwise, if his baptism who is baptized by the grain stands good, and his who is baptized by the chaff not, then it is not true, “This is He that baptizeth.” But if it is true “This is He that baptizeth,” then what is given by the chaff stands good, and he baptizeth in like manner as the dove. For the bad man (who administers baptism) is not the dove, nor belongs to the members of the dove, nor can he possibly be affirmed to be so, either with us in the Catholic Church or with them, if they assert that their Church is the dove. What then are we to understand, brethren? Since it is evident, and known to all, and they must admit, though it be against their will, that when with them bad men give baptism, it is not given after those bad men; and with us, too, when the bad give baptism, it is not given after them. The dove does not baptize after the raven; why then would the raven baptize after the dove?

13. Consider, beloved, why also was there a something pointed out by means of the dove, as that the dove—namely, the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove—came to the Lord on being baptized, and rested upon Him, whilst by the coming of the dove John learned this, that there dwelt in the Lord a power peculiarly His own to baptize? Because it was by this power peculiar to Himself, as I have said, the peace of the Church was made secure. And yet it may be that one may have baptism apart from the dove; but that baptism apart from the dove should do him good, is impossible. Consider, beloved, and understand what I say, for by this deception they mislead such of our brethren as are dull and cold. Let us be more simple and more fervent. See, say they, have I received, or have I not? I answer, Thou hast received. Well, if I have received, there is nothing which thou canst give me; I am safe, even on thine own evidence. For I affirm that I have received, and thou, too, dost confess that I have received: I am safe by the confession of both: what then dost thou promise me? Why wouldst thou make me a Catholic, when thou wouldst not give me anything further, seeing thou confessest that I have already received that which thou affirmest thyself to pos- sess? But when I say, Come to me, I say that thou dost not possess, who yet confessest that I do. Why dost thou say, Come to me?

14. The dove teaches us. From the head of the Lord she answers, and says, Thou hast baptism, but the charity with which I groan thou hast not. How is this, says he, I have baptism, and have not charity? Have I the sacraments, and not charity? Do not shout: show me how can he who divides unity have charity? I, saith he, have baptism. Thou hast; but that baptism, without charity, profits thee nothing; because without charity thou art nothing. The baptism itself, even in him who is nothing, is not nothing. Baptism, indeed, is something, aye, something great, for His sake, of whom it is said, “This is He that baptizeth.” But lest thou shouldst fancy that that which is great can profit thee aught, if thou be not in unity, it was after He was baptized that the dove descended, as if intimating, If thou hast baptism, be in the dove, lest what thou hast profit thee not. Come, then, to the dove, we say; not that thou mayest begin to have what thou hadst not before, but that what thou didst have may begin to profit thee. For thou didst have baptism to destruction without; if thou shalt have it within, it begins to profit thee to salvation.

15. For not only was baptism not profitable to thee, and not also hurtful. Even holy things may be hurtful. In the good, indeed, holy things are to salvation; in the evil, to judgment. For we certainly know, brethren, what we receive, and what we receive is at any rate holy, and no one says that it is not: and what says the apostle? “But he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself.”133 He does not say that the thing itself is bad, but that the evil man, by receiving it amiss, receives the good thing which he does receive to judgment. Was that morsel which the Lord delivered to Judas evil? God forbid. The physician would not give poison; it was health the physician gave; but by unworthily receiving it, he who received it not being at peace, received it unto destruction. So likewise also he who is baptized. I have (baptism), says he, for myself. Thou hast it, I admit. Give good heed to what thou hast; by that very thing which thou hast thou wilt be condemned. Wherefore? Because thou hast what belongs to the dove apart from the dove. If thou hast what is the dove’s in the dove, thou art safe. Suppose thyself a soldier: if thou hast thy general’s mark within the lines, thou servest in safety; but if thou hast it out of bounds, not only that mark will not be of advantage to thee for service, but thou wilt even be punished as a deserter. Come, then, come, and do not say, I have already, I have enough. Come; the dove is calling thee, calling thee by her sighing. My brethren, to you I say, call by groaning, not by quarreling; call by praying, by invitation, by fasting; let them by your charity understand that you pity them. I doubt not, my brethren, that if they see your sorrow they will be astonished, and will come to life again. Come, then, come; be not afraid; be afraid if thou do not come; nay, be not afraid, rather bewail thyself. Come, thou wilt rejoice if thou wilt come; 133 1 Cor. xi. 29. thou wilt indeed groan in the tribulations of thy pilgrimage, but thou wilt rejoice in hope. Come where the dove is, to whom it was said, “My dove is one, the only one of her mother.” Seest thou not the one dove upon the head of Christ, seest thou not the tongues throughout the whole world? It is the same Spirit by the dove and by the tongues: if by the dove the same Spirit, and by the tongues the same Spirit, then was the Holy Spirit given to the whole world, from which Spirit thou hast cut thyself off, that thou mightest clamor with the raven, not that thou mightest sigh with the dove. Come, then.

16. But thou art anxious, it may be, and sayest, I was baptized without; I fear lest therefore I am guilty, in that I was baptized without. Already thou beginnest to know what thou hast to bewail. Thou sayest truly that thou art guilty, not because of thy re ceiving, but because of thy receiving without. Keep then what thou hast received; amend thy receiving it without. Thou hast received what is the dove’s apart from the dove. Here are two things said to thee: Thou hast received, and, Apart from the dove thou hast received. In that thou hast received, I approve; that thou hast received without, I disapprove. Keep then what thou hast received, it is not changed, but recognized: it is the mark of my king, I will not profane it. I will correct the deserter, not change the mark.

17. Boast not of thy baptism because I call it a real baptism. Behold, I say that it is so; the whole Catholic Church says that it is so; the dove regards it, and acknowledges it, and groans because thou hast it without; she sees therein what she may acknowledge, sees also what she may correct. It is a real baptism, come. Thou boastest that it is real, and yet wilt thou not come? What then of the wicked, who do not belong to the dove? Saith the dove to thee, Even the wicked, among whom I groan, who belong not to my members, and it must needs be that I groan among them, have not they that which thou boastest of having? Have not many drunkards baptism? Have not many covetous? Have not many idolaters, and, what is worse, who are such by stealth? Do not the pagans resort, or at least did resort, publicly to idols? And now Christians secretly seek out diviners and consult astrologers. And yet these have baptism; but the dove groans among ravens. Why then dost thou boast in the having it? This that thou hast, the wicked man also has. Have thou humility, charity, peace; have thou the good thing which as yet thou hast not, so that the good thing which thou hast may profit thee.

18. For what thou hast, even Simon Magus had: the Acts of the Apostles are witness, that canonical book which has to be read in the Church every year. You know that every year, in the season following the Lord’s Passion, that book is read, wherein it is written, how the apostle was converted, and from a persecutor became a preacher;134 also, how on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was sent in cloven tongues as of fire.135 There we read that 134 Acts ix. 135 Acts ii. in Samaria many believed through the preaching of Philip: and he is understood to have been either one of the apostles or one of the deacons; for we read there that seven deacons were ordained, among whom is the name of Philip. Well, then, through the preaching of Philip the Samaritans believed; Samaria began to abound in believers. This Simon Magus was there. By his magical arts he had so befooled the people, that they fancied him to be the power of God. Impressed, however, by the signs which were done by Philip, he also believed; but in what manner he believed, the events that followed afterwards proved. And Simon also was baptized. The apostles, who were at Jerusalem, heard this. Peter and John were sent to those in Samaria; they found many baptized; and as none of them had as yet received the Holy Ghost,—in like manner as He at that time descended, so as that they on whom the Holy Spirit came should speak with tongues, for a manifest token that the nations would believe,—they laid their hands on them, praying for them, and they received the Holy Ghost. This Simon—who was not a dove but a raven in the Church, because he sought his own things, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s; whence he loved the power which was in the Christians more than the righteousness—Simon, I say, saw that the Holy Spirit was given by the laying on of the hands of the apostles (not that it was given by them, but given in answer to their prayers), and he said to them, “How much money will ye that I give you, so that by the laying on of my hands also, the Holy Ghost may be given? And Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou thoughtest that the gift of God was to be bought with money.” To whom said he, “Thy money perish with thee”? Undoubtedly to one that was baptized. Baptism he had already; but he did not cleave to the bowels of the dove. Understand that he did not; attend to the very words of the Apostle Peter, for he goes on, “Thou hast no part nor lot in this faith: for I see that thou art in the gall of bitterness.”136 The dove has no gall; Simon had, and for that reason he was separated from the bowels of the dove. What did baptism profit him? Do not therefore boast of thy baptism, as if that were of itself enough for thy salvation. Be not angry, put away thy gall, come to the dove. Here that will profit thee, which without not only did not profit thee, but even was prejudicial to thee.

19. Neither say, I will not come, because I was baptized without. So, begin to have charity, begin to have fruit, let there be fruit found in thee, and the dove will send thee within. We find this in Scripture. The ark was made of incorruptible wood. The incorruptible timbers are the saints, the faithful that belong to Christ. For as in the temple the living stones of which it is built are said to be faithful men, so likewise the incorruptible timbers are they who persevere in the faith. In that same ark, then, the timbers were incorruptible. Now the ark is the Church, it is there the dove baptizeth; for the ark was borne on the water, the incorruptible timbers were baptized within. We find that certain timbers were baptized without, 136 Acts viii. 5–23. such as all the trees that were in the world. Nevertheless the water was the same, not another sort; all had come from heaven, or from abysses of the fountains. It was the same water in which the incorruptible timbers which were in the ark were baptized, and in which the timbers that were without were baptized. The dove was sent forth, and at first found no rest for its feet; it returned to the ark, for all was full of water, and it preferred to return rather than be rebaptized. But the raven was sent out before the water was dried up. Rebaptized, it desired not to return, and died in those waters. May God avert from us that raven’s death. For why did not the raven return, unless because it was taken off by the waters? But on the other hand, the dove not finding rest for its feet, whilst the water was crying to it on every side, “Come, come, dip thyself here;” just as these heretics cry, “Come, come, here thou hast it;” the dove, finding no rest for its feet, returned to the ark. And Noah sent it out a second time, just as the ark sends you out to speak to them; and what did the dove afterwards? Because there were timbers without that were baptized, it brought back to the ark an olive branch. That branch had both leaves and fruit. Let there not be in thee words only, nor leaves only; let there be fruit, and thou returnest to the ark, not of thyself, the dove calls thee back. Groan ye without, that ye may call them back within.

20. Moreover, as to this fruit of the olive, if the matter be examined, you will find what it was. The fruit of the olive signifies charity. How do we prove this? Just as oil is kept down by no liquid, but bursting through all, bounds up and overtops them; so likewise charity cannot be pressed to the bottom, but must of necessity show itself at the top. Therefore the apostle says of it, “Yet show I unto you a more excellent137 way.” Since we have said of oil that it overtops other liquids, in case it should not be of charity, the apostle said, “I show you a more excellent way,” let us hear what follows. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” Go now, Donatus, and cry, “I am eloquent;” go now, and cry, “I am learned.” How far eloquent? How far learned? Hast thou spoken with the tongues of angels? Yet though thou wert to speak with the tongues of angels, not having charity, I should hear only sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. I want solidity; let me find fruit among the leaves; let there be not words merely, let them have the olive, let them return to the ark.

21. But I have the sacrament, thou wilt say. Thou sayest the truth; the sacrament is divine; thou hast baptism, and that I confess. But what says the apostle? “If I should know all mysteries, 138 and have prophecy and all faith, so that I could remove mountains;” in case thou shouldest say this, “I believe; enough for me.” But what says James? “The devils believe and tremble.”139 Faith is mighty, but without charity it profits nothing. The devils confessed 137 Supereminentiorem. 138 Sacramenta. 139 Jas. ii. 19. Christ. Accordingly it was from believing, but not from loving, they said, “What have we to do with Thee?”140 They had faith, but not charity; hence they were devils. Boast not of faith; so far thou art on a level with the devils. Say not to Christ, What have I to do with Thee? For Christ’s unity speaks to thee. Come, learn peace, return to the bowels of the dove. Thou hast been baptized without; have fruit, and thou returnest to the ark.

22. But sayest thou, “Why do you seek us if we are bad men?” That you may be good. The reason why we seek you is, because you are bad; for if you were not bad, we should have found you, and would not be seeking you. He who is good is already found; he who is bad is still sought after. Consequently, we are seeking you; return ye to the ark. “But I have baptism already.” “Though I should know all mysteries,141 and have prophecy and all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing.” Let me see fruit there; let me see the olive there, and thou art called back to the ark.

23. But what sayest thou? “Behold, we suffer many evils.” Would that ye suffered these for Christ, not for your own honor! Hear what follows: They, indeed, boast sometimes, because they do many alms, give to the poor; because they suffer afflictions: but it is for Donatus, not for Christ. Consider how thou sufferest; for if thou sufferest for Donatus, it is for a proud man: thou art not in the dove if thou art suffering for Donatus. Donatus was not the friend of the Bridegroom; for had he been, he would have sought the glory of the Bridegroom, not his own. See the friend of the Bridegroom saying, “This is He that baptizeth.” He, for whom thou art suffering, was not the friend of the Bridegroom. Thou hast not the wedding garment; and if thou art come to the feast, thou wilt be put out of doors; nay, thou hast been cast out of doors already, and for that reason thou art wretched: return at length, and do not boast. Hear what the apostle says: “Though I should distribute all my goods to the poor, and give my body to be burnt, but have not charity.” See what thou dost not have. “Though,” he saith, “I should give my body to be burnt;” and that, too, for the name of Christ; but since there are many who do this boastfully, not with charity, therefore, “Though I should give my body to be burnt, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”142 It was by charity those martyrs, who suffered in time of persecution, did this; but these men do it of their vanity and pride; for in the absence of a persecutor, they throw themselves headlong into destruction. Come, then, that thou mayest have charity. “But we have our martyrs.” What martyrs? They are not doves; hence they attempted to fly, and fell over the rock.

24. You see then, my brethren, that all things cry against them, all the divine pages, all prophecy, the whole gospel, all the apostolic letters, every sigh of the dove, and yet they awake not, they do not yet rouse from their sleep. But if we are the dove, let us groan, let us 140 Mark i. 24. 141 Sacramenta. 142 1 Cor. xiii. 2, 3. persevere, let us hope; God’s compassion will be with you, that the fire of the Holy Spirit may glow in your simplicity; and they will come. There must be no despairing; pray, preach, love; the Lord is able to the utmost. Already they begin to be sensible of their shame; many have become sensible of it, and blushed; Christ will aid, that the rest also may become sensible of it. However, my brethren, at least let the chaff alone remain there; let all the grain be gathered together; let whatever has borne fruit among them return to the ark by the dove.

25. Failing everywhere else, what do they now allege against us, not finding what to say? They have taken away our houses, they have taken away our estates. They bring forward wills. “See, Gaius Seius made a grant of an estate to the church over which Faustinus presided.” Of what church was Faustinus bishop? What is the church? To the church over which Faustinus presided, said he. But Faustinus presided not over a church, but over a sect. The dove, however, is the Church. Why cry out? We have not devoured houses; let the dove have them. Let inquiry be made who the dove is, and let her have them. For you know, my brethren, that those houses of theirs are not Augustin’s; and if you know it not, and imagine that I delight in the possession of them, God knows, yea, knows my judgment respecting those estates, and even what I suffer in that matter; He knows my groaning, since He has deigned to impart to me somewhat of the dove. Behold, there are those estates; by what right dost thou assert thy claim to them? By divine right, or by human? Let them answer: Divine right we have in the Scriptures, human right in the laws of kings. By what right does every man possess what he possesses? Is it not by human right? For by divine right, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”143 The poor and the rich God made of one clay; the same earth supports alike the poor and the rich. By human right, however, one says, This estate is mine, this house is mine, this servant is mine. By human right, therefore, is by right of the emperors. Why so? Because God has distributed to mankind these very human rights through the emperors and kings of this world. Do you wish us to read the laws of the emperors, and to act by the estates according to these laws? If you will have your possession by human right, let us recite the laws of the emperors; let us see whether they would have the heretics possess anything. But what is the emperor to me? thou sayest. It is by right from him that thou possessest the land. Or take away rights created by emperors, and then who will dare say, That estate is mine, or that slave is mine, or this house is mine? If, however, in order to their possessing these things, men have received rights derived from kings, will ye that we read the laws, that you may be glad in having even a single garden, and impute it to nothing but the clemency of the dove that you are permitted to remain in possession even there? For there are to be read well known laws, in which the emperors have directed that those who, being outside the communion of the Catholic Church, usurp to themselves 143 Ps. xxiv. i. the name of Christians, and are not willing in peace to worship the Author of peace, may not dare to possess anything in the name of the Church.

26. But what have we to do with the emperor? But I have already said that we are treating of human right. And yet the apostle would have us obey kings, would have us honor kings, and said, “Honor the king.”144 Do not say, What have I to do with the king? as in that case, what have you to do with the possession? It is by the rights derived from kings that possessions are enjoyed. Thou hast said, What have I to do with the king? Say not then that the possessions are thine; because it is to those same human rights, by which men enjoy their possessions, thou hast referred them. But it is with divine right I have to do, saith he. Well, let us read the Gospel; let us see how far extends the Catholic Church of Christ, upon whom the dove came, which taught, “This is He that baptizeth.” In what way, then, can he possess by divine right, who says, “I baptize;” whilst the dove says, “This is He that baptizeth;” whilst the Scripture says, “My dove is one, the only one of her mother”? Why have you torn the dove?—nay, rather, have torn your own bowels, for while you are yourselves torn to pieces, the dove continues entire. Therefore, my brethren, if, driven from every point, they have nothing to say, I will tell them what to do; let them come to the Catholic Church, and together with us, they will have not only the earth, but Him also who made heaven and earth.

1. We rejoice at your numbers, for you have come together with readiness and in greater numbers than we could have hoped. This it is that delights and consoles us in all the labors and dangers of this life, your love towards God, and pious zeal, and assured hope, and fervor of spirit. You heard when the psalm was read, “that the needy and poor man cries to God in this world.”145 For it is the voice, as you have often heard, and ought to remember, not of one man, and yet of one man; not of one, because the faithful are many—many grains groaning amid the chaff diffused throughout the whole world—but of one, because all are members of Christ, and thus one body. This people, then, poor and needy, does not know to rejoice with the world: its grief is within, and its joy is within, where no one sees but He who listens to him who groans, and crowns him who hopes. The rejoicing of the world is vanity. With great expectation is it hoped for and it cannot, when it comes, be held fast. For this day which is a day of rejoicing in this city to the lost, to-morrow will, of course, cease to be; nor will they themselves be the same tomorrow that they are to-day. And all things pass away, fly away, and vanish like smoke; and woe to those who love such things! For every soul follows what it loves. “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of the Lord abideth forever.”146 Behold what thou must love if thou dost desire to abide for ever. But thou hadst this to reply: How can I apprehend the word of God? “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”147

2. Wherefore, beloved, let it belong to our neediness and poverty to grieve for those who seem to themselves to abound. For their joy is as that of madmen. But as a madman rejoices for the most part in his madness, and laughs, and grieves over him who is in his senses, so let us, beloved, if we have received the medicine coming from heaven, because we all were madmen, as if made whole, because those things which we did love we do not love,—let us, I say, groan unto God for those who are yet in madness, for He is able to save them also. And there is need that they should look upon themselves and be displeased with themselves: to behold they desire, and to behold themselves they have not known. For if they for a little turn their eyes upon themselves, they see their own confusion. But until this take place, let our pursuits be different, let the recreations of our souls be different; our grief avails more than their joy. As far as regards the number of the brethren, it is difficult to conceive that any one of the men should have been carried away by that celebration; but as 145 Ps. lxxiv. 21. 146 Isa. xl. 1–8. 147 John i. 14. regards the number of the sisters, it grieves us, and this is a greater cause for grief, that they do not rather repair to the Church, whom if not fear, modesty at all events ought to deter from the public scene. May He see to this who sees it; and may His mercy be present to heal all. Let us who have come together feed upon the feast of God, and let our joy be His word. For He has invited us to His gospel, and He is our food, than whom nothing is sweeter, if only a man have a healthy palate in his heart.

3. But I imagine, beloved brethren, that you remember that this Gospel is read in order in suitable portions; and I think that it has not escaped you what has lately been treated of, specially the recent matters concerning John and the dove. Concerning John, namely, what new thing he learned concerning the Lord by means of the dove, although he had already known the Lord. And this was discovered by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, that John indeed already knew the Lord, but that the Lord Himself was to baptize, that the power of baptizing He would not transfer from Himself to any one, this he learned by means of the dove, because it was said to him, “On whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending as a dove, and abiding upon Him, this is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.”148 What is “This is He”? Not another, although by means of another. But why by means of a dove? Many things were said, and I am not able, nor is there need that I should go over all;—principally, however, to denote peace, because also the trees which were baptized outside, because the dove found in them fruit, it brought to the ark, as you remember the dove sent out by Noah from the ark, which floated on the flood and was washed by baptism, was not submerged. When, then, it was sent forth, it brought an olive branch; but it had not leaves alone, it had also fruit.149 This, then, we ought to wish for our brethren who are baptized outside, that they may have fruit; the dove will not permit them to remain outside, but bring them back to the ark. For the whole of fruit is charity, without which a man is nothing, whatever else he have. And this, which is most fully said by the apostle, we have mentioned and recounted. For he says, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal; and though I should have all knowledge, and know all mysteries, and have all prophecy, and should have all faith” (but in what sense did he say all faith?), “so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I should distribute all my goods to the poor, and though I should give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”150 But in no manner are they able to say that they have charity who divide unity. These things were said: let us see what follows.

1. The miracle indeed of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby He made the water into wine, is not marvellous to those who know that it was God’s doing. For He who made wine on that day at the marriage feast, in those six water-pots, which He commanded to be filled with water, the self-same does this every year in vines. For even as that which the servants put into the water-pots was turned into wine by the doing of the Lord, so in like manner also is what the clouds pour forth changed into wine by the doing of the same Lord. But we do not wonder at the latter, because it happens every year: it has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence. And yet it suggests a greater consideration than that which was done in the water-pots. For who is there that considers the works of God, whereby this whole world is governed and regulated, who is not amazed and overwhelmed with miracles? If he considers the vigorous power of a single grain of any seed whatever, it is a mighty thing, it inspires him with awe. But since men, intent on a different matter, have lost the consideration of the works of God, by which they should daily praise Him as the Creator, God has, as it were, reserved to Himself the doing of certain extraordinary actions, that, by striking them with wonder, He might rouse men as from sleep to worship Him. A dead man has risen again; men marvel: so many are born daily, and none marvels. If we reflect more considerately, it is a matter of greater wonder for one to be who was not before, than for one who was to come to life again. Yet the same God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, doeth by His word all these things; and it is He who created that governs also. The former miracles He did by His Word, God with Himself; the latter miracles He did by the same Word incarnate, and for us made man. As we wonder at the things which were done by the man Jesus, so let us wonder at the things which where done by Jesus God. By Jesus God were made heaven, and earth, and the sea, all the garniture of heaven, the abounding riches of the earth, and the fruitfulness of the sea;—all these things which lie within the reach of our eyes were made by Jesus God. And we look at these things, and if His own spirit is in us they in such manner please us, that we praise Him that contrived them; not in such manner that turning ourselves to the works we turn away from the Maker, and, in a manner, turning our face to the things made and our backs to Him that made them.

2. And these things indeed we see; they lie before our eyes. But what of those we do not see, as angels, virtues, powers, dominions, and every inhabitant of this fabric which is above the heavens, and beyond the reach of our eyes? Yet angels, too, when necessary, often showed themselves to men. Has not God made all these too by His Word, that is, by His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ? What of the human soul itself, which is not seen, and yet by its works shown in the flesh excites great admiration in those that duly reflect on them,—by whom was it made, unless by God? And through whom was it made, unless through the Son of God? Not to speak as yet of the soul of man: the soul of any brute whatever, see how it regulates the huge body, puts forth the senses, the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the nostrils to smell, the taste to discern flavors—the members, in short, to execute their respective functions! Is it the body, not the soul, namely the inhabitant of the body, that doeth these things? The soul is not apparent to the eyes, nevertheless it excites admiration by these its actions. Direct now thy consideration to the soul of man, on which God has bestowed understanding to know its Creator, to discern and distinguish between good and evil, that is, between right and wrong: see how many things it does through the body! Observe this whole world arranged in the same human commonwealth, with what administrations, with what orderly degrees of authority, with what conditions of citizenship, with what laws, manners, arts! The whole of this is brought about by the soul, and yet this power of the soul is not visible. When withdrawn from the body, the latter is a mere carcase: first, it in a manner preserves it from rottenness. For all flesh is corruptible, and falls off into putridity unless preserved by the soul as by a kind of seasoning. But the human soul has this quality in common with the soul of the brute; those qualities rather are to be admired which I have stated, such as belong to the mind and intellect, wherein also it is renewed after the image of its Creator, after whose image man was formed.182 What will this power of the soul be when this body shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality?183 If such is its power, acting through corruptible flesh, what shall be its power through a spiritual body, after the resurrection of the dead? Yet this soul, as I have said, of admirable nature and substance, is a thing invisible, intellectual; this soul also was made by God Jesus, for He is the Word of God. “All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.”

3. When we see, therefore, such deeds wrought by Jesus God, why should we wonder at water being turned into wine by the man Jesus? For He was not made man in such manner that He lost His being God. Man was added to Him, God not lost to Him. This miracle was wrought by the same who made all those things. Let us not therefore wonder that God did it, but love Him because He did it in our midst, and for the purpose of our restoration. For He gives us certain intimations by the very circumstances of the case. I suppose that it was not without cause He came to the marriage. The miracle apart, there lies something mysterious and sacramental in the very fact. Let us knock, that He may open to us, and fill us with the invisible wine: for we were water, and He made us wine, made us wise; for He gave us the wisdom of His faith, whilst before we were foolish. And it appertains, it may be, to this wisdom, together with the honor of God, and with the praise of His majesty, and with the charity of His most powerful mercy, to understand what was done in this miracle.

1. May the Lord our God be present, that He may grant us to render you what we promised. For yesterday, if you remember, holy brethren, when the shortness of the time prevented us from completing the sermon we had begun, we put off until to-day the unfolding, by God’s assistance, of those things which are mystically put in hidden meanings in this fact of the Gospel lesson. We need not, therefore, now stay any longer to commend the miracle of God. For He is the same God who, throughout the whole creation, worketh miracles every day, which become lightly esteemed by men, not because of the ease with which they are wrought, but by reason of their constant recurrence. Those uncommon works, however, which were done by the same Lord—that is, by the Word for us made flesh—occasioned greater astonishment to men, not because they are greater than those which He daily performs in the creation, but because these which happen every day are accomplished as it were in the course of nature; but the others appear exhibited to the eyes of men, wrought by the efficacy of a power, as it were, immediately present. We said, as you remember, one dead man rose again, people were amazed, whilst no man wonders at the birth every day of those who were not in being. In like manner, who does not wonder at water turned into wine, although God is doing this every year in vines? But since all the works which the Lord Jesus did, serve not only to rouse our hearts by their miraculous character, but also to edify our hearts in the doctrine of faith, it behoves us thoroughly to examine into the meaning and significance of those works. For the consideration of the meaning of all these things we deferred, as you remember, till today.

2. The Lord, in that He came to the marriage to which He was invited, wished, apart from the mystical signification, to assure us that marriage was His own institution. For there were to be those of whom the apostle spoke, “forbidding to marry,”198 and asserting that marriage was an evil, and of the devil’s institution: notwithstanding the same Lord declares in the Gospel, on being asked whether it be lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause, that it is not lawful save for the cause of fornication. In His answer, if you remember, He said, “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”199 And they that are well instructed in the catholic faith know that God instituted marriage; and as the union of man and wife is from God, so divorce is from the devil. But in the case of fornication it is lawful for a man to put away his wife, because she first chose to be no longer wife in not preserving conjugal fidelity to her husband. Nor are those women who vow virginity to God, although they hold a higher place of honor and sanctity in the Church, without mar- 198 1 Tim. iv. 3. 199 Matt. xix. 6. riage. For they too, together with the whole Church, attain to a marriage, a marriage in which Christ is the Bridegroom. And for this cause, therefore, did the Lord, on being invited, come to the marriage, to confirm conjugal chastity, and to show forth the sacrament of marriage. For the bridegroom in that marriage, to whom it was said, “Thou hast kept the good wine until now,” represented the person of the Lord. For the good wine—namely, the gospel—Christ has kept until now.

3. For now let us begin to uncover the hidden meanings of the mysteries, so far as He in whose name we made you the promise may enable us. In the ancient times there was prophecy, and no times were left without the dispensation of prophecy. But the prophecy, since Christ was not understood therein, was water. For in water wine is in some manner latent. The apostle tells us what we are to understand by this water: “Even unto this day,” saith he, “whilst Moses is read, that same veil is upon their heart; that it is not unveiled because it is done away in Christ. And when thou shalt have passed over,” saith he, “to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.”200 By the veil he means the covering over of prophecy, so that it was not understood. When thou hast passed over to the Lord, the veil is taken away; so likewise is tastelessness taken away when thou hast passed over to the Lord; and what was water now becomes wine to thee. Read all the prophetic books; and if Christ be not understood therein, what canst thou find so insipid and silly? Understand Christ in them, and what thou readest not only has a taste, but even inebriates thee; transporting the mind from the body, so that forgetting the things that are past, thou reachest forth to the things that are before.201

4. Wherefore, prophecy from ancient times, even from the time when the series of human births began to run onwards, was not silent concerning Christ; but the import of the prophecy was concealed therein, for as yet it was water. Whence do we prove that in all former times, until the age in which the Lord came, prophecy did not fail concerning Him? From the Lord’s own saying. For when He had risen from the dead, He found His disciples doubting concerning Himself whom they had followed. For they saw that He was dead, and they had no hope that He would rise again; all their hope was gone. On what ground was the thief, after receiving praise, deemed worthy to be that same day in Paradise? Because when bound on the cross he confessed Christ, while the disciples doubted concerning Him. Well, He found them wavering, and in a manner reproving themselves because they had looked for redemption in Him. Yet they sorrowed for Him as cut off without fault, for they knew Him to be innocent. And this is what the disciples themselves said, after His resurrection, when He had found certain of them in the way, sorrowful, “Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? 200 2 Cor. iii. 14–16. 201 Phil. iii. 13. And He said unto them, What things? And they said, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deeds and words before God and all the people: how our priests and rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and bound Him to the cross. But we trusted that it was He who should have redeemed Israel; and to-day is now the third day since these things were done.” After one of the two whom He found in the way going to a neighboring village had spoken these and other words, Jesus answered and said, “O irrational, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered all these things. and to enter into His glory? And beginning from Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” And likewise, in another place, when He would even have His disciples touch Him with their hands, that they might believe that He had risen in the body, He saith, “These are the words which I have spoken unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, that Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

5. When these words of the Gospel are understood, and they are certainly clear, all the mysteries which are latent in this miracle of the Lord will be laid open. Observe what He says, that it behoved the things to be fulfilled in Christ that were written of Him. Where were they written? “In the law,” saith He, “and in the prophets, and in the Psalms.” He omitted no part of the Old Scriptures. These were water; and hence the disciples were called irrational by the Lord, because as yet they tasted to them as water, not as wine. And how did He make of the water wine? When He opened their understanding, and expounded to them the Scriptures, beginning from Moses, through all the prophets; with which being now inebriated, they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us in the way, when He opened to us the Scriptures?” For they understood Christ in those books in which they knew Him not before. Thus our Lord Jesus Christ changed the water into wine, and that has now taste which before had not, that now inebriates which before did not. For if He had commanded the water to be poured out of the water-pots, and so Himself had put in the wine from the secret repositories of the creature, whence He made bread when He satisfied so many thousands; for five loaves were not in themselves sufficient to satisfy five thousand men, nor even to fill twelve baskets, but the omnipotence of the Lord was, as it were, a fountain of bread; so likewise He might, on the water being poured out, have poured in wine: but had He done this, He would appear to have rejected the Old Scriptures. When, however, He turns the water itself into wine, He shows us that the Old Scripture also is from Himself, for at His own command were the water-pots filled. It is from the Lord, indeed, that the Old Scripture also is; but it has no taste unless Christ is understood therein.

1. In the psalm you have heard the groaning of the poor, whose members endure tribulations over the whole earth, even unto the end of the world. Make it your chief business, my brethren, to be among and of these members: for all tribulation is to pass away. “Woe to them that rejoice!”229 “Blessed,” says the Truth, “are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” God has become man: what shall man be, for whom God is become man? Let this hope comfort us in every tribulation and temptation of this life. For the enemy does not cease to persecute; and when he does not openly rage, he plots in secret. How does he plot? “And for wrath, they worked deceitfully.”230 Thence is he called a lion and a dragon. But what is said to Christ? “Thou shall tread on the lion and the dragon.” Lion, for open rage; dragon, for hidden treachery. The dragon cast Adam out of Paradise; as a lion, the same persecuted the Church, as Peter says: “For your adversary, the devil, goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”231 Let it not seem to you as if the devil had lost his ferocity. When he blandly flatters, then is he the more vigilantly to be guarded against. But amid all these treacherous devices and temptations of his, what shall we do but that which we have heard in the psalm: “And I, when they were troublesome to me, clothed me in sackcloth, and humbled my soul in fasting.”232 There is one that heareth prayer, hesitate not to pray; but He that heareth abideth within. You need not direct your eyes towards some mountain; you need not raise your face to the stars, or to the sun, or to the moon; nor must you suppose that you are heard when you pray beside the sea: rather detest such prayers. Only cleanse the chamber of thy heart; wheresoever thou art, wherever thou prayest, He that hears is within, within in the secret place, which the psalmist calls his bosom, when he says, “And my prayer shall be turned in my own bosom.”233 He that heareth thee is not beyond thee; thou hast not to travel far, nor to lift thyself up, so as to reach Him as it were with thy hands. Rather, if thou lift thyself up, thou shalt fall; if thou humble thyself, He will draw near thee. Our Lord God is here, the Word of God, the Word made flesh, the Son of the Father, the Son of God, the Son of man; the lofty One to make us, the humble to make us anew, walking among men, bearing the human, concealing the divine.

2. “He went down,” as the evangelist says, “to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples; and they continued there not many days.” Behold He has 229 Luke vi. 25. 230 Ps. xxxv. 20. 231 1 Pet. v. 8. 232 Ps. xxxv. 13. 233 Ps. xxxv. 13. a mother, and brethren, and disciples: whence He has a mother, thence brethren. For our Scripture is wont to call them brethren, not only that are sprung from the same man and woman, or from the same mother, or from the same father, though by different mothers; or, in truth, that are of the same degree as cousins by the father’s or mother’s side: not these alone is our Scripture wont to call brethren. The Scripture must be understood as it speaks. It has its own language; one who does not know this language is perplexed and says, Whence had the Lord brethren? For surely Mary did not give birth a second time? Far from it! With her begins the dignity of virgins. She could be a mother, but a woman known of man she could not be. She is spoken of as mulier [which usually signifies a wife], but only in reference to her sex, not as implying loss of virgin purity: and this follows from the language of Scripture itself. For Eve, too, immediately she was formed from the side of her husband, and as yet not known of her husband, is, as you know, called mulier: “And he made her a woman [mulier].” Then, whence the brethren? The kinsmen of Mary, of whatever degree, are the brethren of the Lord. How do we prove this? From Scripture itself. Lot is called “Abraham’s brother;”234 he was his brother’s son. Read, and thou wilt find that Abraham was Lot’s uncle on the father’s side, and yet they are called brethren. Why, but because they were kinsmen? Laban the Syrian was Jacob’s uncle by the mother’s side, for he was the brother of Rebecca, Isaac’s wife and Jacob’s mother.235 Read the Scripture, and thou wilt find that uncle and sister’s son are called brothers.236 When thou hast known this rule, thou wilt find that all the blood relations of Mary are the brethren of Christ.

3. But rather were those disciples brethren; for even those kinsmen would not be brethren were they not disciples: and to no advantage brethren, if they did not recognize their brother as their master. For in a certain place, when He was informed that His mother and His brethren were standing without, at the time He was speaking to His disciples, He said: “Who is my mother? or who are my brethren? And stretching out His hand over His disciples, He said, These are my brethren;” and, “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father, the same is my mother, and brother, and sister.”237 Therefore also Mary, because she did the will of the Father. What the Lord magnified in her was, that she did the will of the Father, not that flesh gave birth to flesh. Give good heed, beloved. Moreover, when the Lord was regarded with admiration by the multitude, while doing signs and wonders, and showing forth what lay concealed under the flesh, certain admiring souls said: “Happy is the womb that bare Thee: and He said, Yea, rather, happy are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”238 234 Gen. xiii. 8; xiv. 14. 235 Gen. xxviii. 5. 236 Gen. xxix. 12–15. 237 Matt. xii. 46–50. 238 Luke xi. 27. That is to say, even my mother, whom ye have called happy, is happy in that she keeps the word of God: not because in her the Word was made flesh and dwelt in us; but because she keeps that same word of God by which she was made, and which in her was made flesh. Let not men rejoice in temporal offspring, but let them exult if in spirit they are joined to God. We have spoken these things on account of that which the evangelist says, that He dwelt in Capernaum a few days, with His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples.

4. What follows upon this? “And the Jews’ passover was at hand; and He went up to Jerusalem.” The narrator relates another matter, as it came to his recollection. “And He found in the temple those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and when He had made, as it were, a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple; the oxen likewise, and the sheep; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; and make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.” What have we heard, brethren? See, that temple was still a figure, and yet the Lord cast out of it all that sought their own, all who had come to market. And what did they sell there? Things which people needed in the sacrifices of that time. For you know, beloved, that sacrifices were given to that people, in consideration of the carnal mind and stony heart yet in them, to keep them from falling away to idols: and they offered there for sacrifices oxen, sheep, and doves: you know this, for you have read it. It was not a great sin, then, if they sold in the temple that which was bought for the purpose of offering in the temple: and yet He cast them out thence. If, while they were selling what was lawful and not against justice (for it is not unlawful to sell what it is honorable to buy), He nevertheless drove those men out, and suffered not the house of prayer to be made a house of merchandise; how, if He found drunkards there, what would the Lord do? If the house of God ought not to be made a house of trading, ought it to be made a house of drinking? But when we say this, they gnash upon us with their teeth; but the psalm which you have heard comforts us: “They gnashed upon me with their teeth.” Yet we know how we may be cured, although the strokes of the lash are multiplied on Christ, for His word is made to bear the scourge: “The scourges,” saith He, “were gathered together against me, and they knew not.” He was scourged by the scourges of the Jews; He is now scourged by the blasphemies of false Christians: they multiply scourges for their Lord, and know it not. Let us, so far as He aids us, do as the psalmist did: “But as for me, when they were troublesome to me, I put on sackcloth, and humbled my soul with fasting.”239

5. Yet we say, brethren (for He did not spare those men: He who was to be scourged by them first scourged them), that He gave us a certain sign, in that He made a scourge of small cords, and with it lashed the unruly, who were making merchandise of God’s temple. For indeed every man twists for himself a rope by his sins: “Woe to them who draw sins as a 239 Ps. xxxv. 13. long rope?”240 Who makes a long rope? He who adds sin to sin. How are sins added to sins? When the sins which have been committed are covered over by other sins. One has committed a theft: that he may not be found out to have committed it, he seeks the astrologer. It were enough to have committed theft: why wilt thou add sin to sin? Behold two sins committed. When thou art forbidden to go to the astrologer, thou revilest the bishop: behold three sins. When thou hearest it said of thee, Cast him forth from the Church; thou sayest, I will betake me to the party of Donatus: behold thou addest a fourth sin. The rope is growing; be thou afraid of the rope. It is good for thee to be corrected here, when thou art scourged with it; that it may not be said of thee at the last, “Bind ye his hands and feet, and cast him forth into outer darkness.”241 For, “With the cords of his own sins is every one bound.”242 The former of these is the saying of the Lord, the latter that of another Scripture; but yet both are the sayings of the Lord. With their own sins are men bound and cast into outer darkness.

6. However, to seek the mystery of the deed in the figure, who are they that sell oxen? Who are they that sell sheep and doves? They are they who seek their own in the Church, not the things which are Christ’s. They account all a matter of sale, while they will not be redeemed: they have no wish to be bought, and yet they wish to sell. Yes; good indeed is it for them that they may be redeemed by the blood of Christ, that they may come to the peace of Christ. Now, what does it profit to acquire in this world any temporal and transitory thing whatsoever, be it money, or pleasure of the palate, or honor that consists in the praise of men? Are they not all wind and smoke? Do they not all pass by and flee away? Are they not all as a river rushing headlong into the sea? And woe to him who shall fall into it, for he shall be swept into the sea. Therefore ought we to curb all our affections from such desires. My brethren, they that seek such things are they that sell. For that Simon too, wished to buy the Holy Ghost, just because he meant to sell the Holy Ghost; and he thought the apostles to be just such traders as they whom the Lord cast out of the temple with a scourge. For such an one he was himself, and desired to buy what he might sell: he was of those who sell doves. Now it was in a dove that the Holy Ghost appeared.243 Who, then, are they, brethren, that sell doves, but they who say, “We give the Holy Ghost”? But why do they say this, and at what price do they sell? At the price of honor to themselves. They receive as the price, temporal seats of honor, that they may be seen to be sellers of doves. Let them beware of the scourge of small cords. The dove is not for sale: it is given freely; for grace, or favor, it is called. Therefore, my brethren, just as you see them that sell, common chapmen, each 240 Isa. v. 18; LXX. 241 Matt. xxii. 3. 242 Prov. v. 22. 243 Matt. iii. 16. cries up what he sells: how many stalls they have set up! Primianus has a stall at Carthage, Maximianus has another, Rogatus has another in Mauritania, they have another in Numidia, this party and that, which it is not in our power now to name. Accordingly, one goes round to buy the dove, and everyone at his own stall cries up what he sells. Let the heart of such an one turn away from every seller; let him come where he receives freely. Aye, brethren, and they do not blush, that, by these bitter and malicious dissensions of theirs, they have made of themselves so many parties, while they assume to be what they are not, while they are lifted up, thinking themselves to be something when they are nothing.244 But what is fulfilled in them, since that they will not be corrected, but that which you have heard in the psalm: “They were rent asunder, and felt no remorse”?

7. Well, who sell oxen? They who have dispensed to us the Holy Scriptures are understood to mean the oxen. The apostles were oxen, the prophets were oxen. Whence the apostle says: “Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith He it for our sakes? Yea, for our sakes He saith it: that he who ploweth should plow in hope; and he that thresheth, in hope of partaking.” 245 Those oxen, then, have left to us the narration of the Scriptures. For it was not of their own that they dispensed, because they sought the glory of the Lord. Now, what have ye heard in that psalm? “And let them say continually, The Lord be magnified, they that wish the peace of His servant.”246 God’s servant, God’s people, God’s Church. Let them who wish the peace of that Church magnify the Lord, not the servant: “and let them say continually, The Lord be magnified.” Who, let say? “Them who wish the peace of His servant.” The voice of that people, of that servant, is clearly that voice which you have heard in lamentations in the psalm, and were moved at hearing, because you are of that people. What was sung by one, re-echoed from the hearts of all. Happy they who recognized themselves in those voices as in a mirror. Who, then, are they that wish the peace of His servant, the peace of His people, the peace of the one whom He calls His “only one,” and whom He wishes to be delivered from the lion: “Deliver mine only one from the power of the dog?”247 They who say always, “The Lord be magnified.” Those oxen, then, magnified the Lord, not themselves. See this ox magnifying his Lord, because “the ox knoweth his owner;”248 observe that ox in fear lest men desert the ox’s owner and rely on the ox: how he dreads them that are willing to put their confidence 244 Gal. vi. 3. 245 1 Cor. ix. 9, 10. 246 Ps. xxxv. 27. 247 Ps. xxii. 20. 248 Isa. i. 3. in him: “Was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?”249 Of what I gave, I was not the giver: freely ye have received; the dove came down from heaven. “I have planted,” saith he, “Apollo, watered; but God gave the increase: neither he that planteth is anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.”250 “And let them say always, The Lord be magnified, they that wish the peace of His servant.”

8. These men, however, deceive the people by the very Scriptures, that they may receive honors and praises at their hand, and that men may not turn to the truth. But in that they deceive, by the very Scriptures, the people of whom they seek honors, they do in fact sell oxen: they sell sheep too; that is, the common people themselves. And to whom do they sell them, but to the devil? For if the Church be Christ’s sole and only one, who is it that carries off whatever is cut away from it, but that lion that roars and goes about, “seeking whom he may devour?”251 Woe to them that are cut off from the Church! As for her, she will remain entire. “For the Lord knoweth them that are His.”252 These, however, so far as they can, sell oxen and sheep, they sell doves too: let them guard against the scourge of their own sins. But when they suffer some such things for these their iniquities, let them acknowledge that the Lord has made a scourge of small cords, and is admonishing them to change themselves and be no longer traffickers: for if they will not change, they shall at the end hear it said, “Bind ye these men’s hands and feet, and cast them forth into outer darkness.”

9. “Then the disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up:” because by this zeal of God’s house, the Lord cast these men out of the temple. Brethren, let every Christian among the members of Christ be eaten up with zeal of God’s house. Who is eaten up with zeal of God’s house? He who exerts himself to have all that he may happen to see wrong there corrected, desires it to be mended, does not rest idle: who if he cannot mend it, endures it, laments it. The grain is not shaken out on the threshingfloor that it may enter the barn when the chaff shall have been separated. If thou art a grain, be not shaken out from the floor before the putting into the granary; lest thou be picked up by the birds before thou be gathered into the granary. For the birds of heaven, the powers of the air, are waiting to snatch up something off the threshing-floor, and they can snatch up only what has been shaken out of it. Therefore, let the zeal of God’s house eat thee up: let the zeal of God’s house eat up every Christian, zeal of that house of God of which he is a member. For thy own house is not more important than that wherein thou hast everlasting rest. Thou goest into thine own house for temporal rest, thou enterest God’s house for everlasting rest. If, then, thou busiest thyself to see that nothing wrong be done in thine own 249 1 Cor. i. 13. 250 1 Cor. iii. 6, 7. 251 1 Pet. v. 8. 252 2 Tim. ii. 19. house, is it fit that thou suffer, so far as thou canst help, if thou shouldst chance to see aught wrong in the house of God, where salvation is set before thee, and rest without end? For example, seest thou a brother rushing to the theatre? Stop him, warn him, make him sorry, if the zeal of God’s house doth eat thee up. Seest thou others running and desiring to get drunk, and that, too, in holy places, which is not decent to be done in any place? Stop those whom thou canst, restrain whom thou canst, frighten whom thou canst, allure gently whom thou canst: do not, however, rest silent. Is it a friend? Let him be admonished gently. Is it a wife? Let her be bridled with the utmost rigor. Is it a maid-servant? Let her be curbed even with blows. Do whatever thou canst for the part thou bearest; and so thou fulfillest, “The zeal of Thy house hath eaten me up.” But if thou wilt be cold, languid, having regard only to thyself, and as if thyself were enough to thee, and saying in thy heart, What have I to do with looking after other men’s sins? Enough for me is the care of my own soul: this let me keep undefiled for God;—come, does there not recur to thy mind the case of that servant who hid his talent and would not lay it out? Was he accused because he lost it, and not because he kept it without profit?253 So hear ye then, my brethren, that ye may not rest idle. I am about to give you counsel: may He who is within give it; for though it be through me, it is He that gives it. You know what to do, each one of you, in his own house, with his friend, his tenant, his client, with greater, with less: as God grants an entrance, as He opens a door for His word, do not cease to win for Christ; because you were won by Christ.

10. “The Jews said unto Him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?” And the Lord answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and dost thou say, In three days I will rear it up?” Flesh they were, fleshly things they minded; but He was speaking spiritually. But who could understand of what temple He spoke? But yet we have not far to seek; He has discovered it to us through the evangelist, he has told us of what temple He said it. “But He spake,” saith the evangelist, “of the temple of His body.” And it is manifest that, being slain, the Lord did rise again after three days. This is known to us all now: and if from the Jews it is concealed, it is because they stand without; yet to us it is open, because we know in whom we believe. The destroying and rearing again of that temple, we are about to celebrate in its yearly solemnity: for which we exhort you to prepare yourselves, such of you as are catechumens that you may receive grace; even now is the time, even now let that be purposed which may then come to the birth. Now, that thing we know.

11. But perhaps this is demanded of us, whether the fact that the temple was forty and six years in building may not have in it some mystery. There are, indeed, many things that may be said of this matter; but what may briefly be said, and easily understood, that we say meanwhile. Brethren, we have said yesterday, if I mistake not, that Adam was one man, and 253 Matt. xxv. 25–30. is yet the whole human race. For thus we said, if you remember. He was broken, as it were, in pieces; and, being scattered, is now being gathered together, and, as it were, conjoined into one by a spiritual fellowship and concord. And “the poor that groan,” as one man, is that same Adam, but in Christ he is being renewed: because an Adam is come without sin, to destroy the sin of Adam in His own flesh, and that Adam might renew to himself the image of God. Of Adam then is Christ’s flesh: of Adam the temple which the Jews destroyed, and the Lord raised up in three days. For He raised His own flesh: see, that He was thus God equal with the Father. My brethren, the apostle says, “Who raised Him from the dead.” Of whom says he this? Of the Father. “He became,” saith he, “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore also God raised Him from the dead, and gave Him a name which is above every name.”254 He who was raised and exalted is the Lord. Who raised Him? The Father, to whom He said in the psalms, “Raise me up and I will requite them.”255 Hence, the Father raised Him up. Did He not raise Himself? And doeth the Father anything without the Word? What doeth the Father without His only One? For, hear that He also was God. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Did He say, Destroy the temple, which in three days the Father will raise up? But as when the Father raiseth, the Son also raiseth; so when the Son raiseth, the Father also raiseth: because the Son has said, “I and the Father are one.”256

12. Now, what does the number Forty-six mean? Meanwhile, how Adam extends over the whole globe, you have already heard explained yesterday, by the four Greek letters of four Greek words. For if thou write the four words, one under the other, that is, the names of the four quarters of the world, of east, west, north, and south, which is the whole globe,—whence the Lord says that He will gather His elect from the four winds when He shall come to judgment; 257—if, I say, you take these four Greek words,—ἀνατολὴ, which is east; δύσις, which is west; ἄρχτος, which is north; μεσημβρία, which is south; Anatole, Dysis, Arctos, Mesembria,—the first letters of the words make Adam. How, then, do we find there, too, the number forty-six? Because Christ’s flesh was of Adam. The Greeks compute numbers by letters. What we make the letter A, they in their tongue put Alpha, α, and Alpha, α, is called one. And where in numbers they write Beta, β, which is their b, it is called in numbers two. Where they write Gamma, γ, it is called in their numbers three. Where they write Delta, δ, it is called in their numbers four; and so by means of all the letters they have numbers. The letter we call M, and they call My, μ, signifies forty; for they say My, μ, τεσσαράχοντα. Now look at the number which these letters make, and you will find 254 Phil. ii. 8. 255 Ps. xli. 11. 256 John x. 30. 257 Mark xiii. 27. in it that the temple was built in forty-six years. For the word Adam has Alpha, α, which is one: it has Delta, δ, which is four; there are five for thee: it has Alpha, α, again, which is one; there are six for thee: it has also My, μ, which is forty; there hast thou forty-six. These things, my brethren, were said by our elders before us, and that number forty-six was found by them in letters. And because our Lord Jesus Christ took of Adam a body, not of Adam derived sin; took of him a corporeal temple, not iniquity which must be driven from the temple: and that the Jews crucified that very flesh which He derived from Adam (for Mary was of Adam, and the Lord’s flesh was of Mary); and that, further, He was in three days to raise that same flesh which they were about to slay on the cross: they destroyed the temple which was forty-six years in building, and that temple He raised up in three days.

13. We bless the Lord our God, who gathered us together to spiritual joy. Let us be ever in humility of heart, and let our joy be with Him. Let us not be elated with any prosperity of this world, but know that our happiness is not until these things shall have passed way. Now, my brethren, let our joy be in hope: let none rejoice as in a present thing, lest he stick fast in the way. Let joy be wholly of hope to come, desire be wholly of eternal life. Let all sighings breathe after Christ. Let that fairest one alone, who loved the foul to make them fair, be all our desire; after Him alone let us run, for Him alone pant and sigh; “and let them say always, The Lord be magnified, that wish the peace of His servant.”

Chapter II. 23–25; III. 1–5

1. Opportunely has the Lord procured for us that this passage should occur in its order to day: for I suppose you have observed, beloved, that we have undertaken to consider and explain the Gospel according to John in due course. Opportunely then it occurs, that to-day you should hear from the Gospel, that, “Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he shall not see the kingdom of God.” For it is time that we exhort you, who are still catechumens, who have believed in Christ in such wise, that you are still bearing your sins. And none shall see the kingdom of heaven while burdened with sins; for none shall reign with Christ, but he to whom they have been forgiven: but forgiven they cannot be, but to him who is born again of water and of the Holy Spirit. But let us observe all the words what they imply, that here the sluggish may find with what earnestness they must haste to put off their burden. For were they bearing some heavy load, either of stone, or of wood, or even of some gain; if they were carrying corn, or wine, or money, they would run to put off their loads: they are carrying a burden of sins, and yet are sluggish to run. You must run to put off this burden; it weighs you down, it drowns you.

2. Behold, you have heard that when our Lord Jesus Christ “was in Jerusalem at the Passover, on the feast day, many believed in His name, seeing the signs which He did.” “Many believed in His name;” and what follows? “But Jesus did not trust Himself to them.” Now what does this mean, “They believed,” or trusted, “in His name;” and yet “Jesus did not trust Himself to them;”? Was it, perhaps, that they had not believed on Him, but were feigning to have believed, and that therefore Jesus did not trust Himself to them? But the evangelist would not have said, “Many believed in His name,” if he were not giving a true testimony to them. A great thing, then, it is, and a wonderful thing: men believe on Christ, and Christ trusts not Himself to men. Especially is it wonderful, since, being the Son of God, He of course suffered willingly. If He were not willing, He would never have suffered, since, had He not willed it, He had not been born; and if He had willed this only, merely to be born and not to die, He might have done even whatever He willed, because He is the almighty Son of the almighty Father. Let us prove it by facts. For when they wished to hold Him, He departed from them. The Gospel says, “And when they would have cast Him headlong from the top of the mountain, He departed from them unhurt.”258 And when they came to lay hold of Him, after He was sold by Judas the traitor, who imagined that he had it in his power to deliver up his Master and Lord, there also the Lord showed that He suffered of His own will, not of necessity. For when the Jews desired to lay hold of Him, He said to them, “Whom seek ye? But they said, Jesus of Nazareth. And said He, I am He. On hearing this saying, 258 Luke iv. 30. they went backward, and fell to the ground.”259 In this, that in answering them He threw them to the ground, He showed His power; that in His being taken by them He might show His will. It was of compassion, then, that He suffered. For “He was delivered up for our sins, and rose again for our justification.”260 Hear His own words: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again: no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself, that I may take it again.”261 Since, therefore, He had such power, since He declared it by words, showed it by deeds, what then does it mean that Jesus did not trust Himself to them, as if they would do Him some harm against His will, or would do something to Him against His will, especially seeing that they had already believed in His name? Moreover, of the same persons the evangelist says, “They believed in His name,” of whom he says, “But Jesus did not trust Himself to them.” Why? “Because He knew all men, and needed not that any should bear witness of man: for Himself knew what was in man.” The artificer knew what was in His own work better than the work knew what was in itself. The Creator of man knew what was in man, which the created man himself knew not. Do we not prove this of Peter, that he knew not what was in himself, when he said, “With Thee, even to death”? Hear that the Lord knew what was in man: “Thou with me even to death? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.”262 The man, then, knew not what was in himself; but the Creator of the man knew what was in the man. Nevertheless, many believed in His name, and yet Jesus did not trust Himself to them. What can we say, brethren? Perhaps the circumstances that follow will indicate to us what the mystery of these words is. That men had believed in Him is manifest, is true; none doubts it, the Gospel says it, the truthspeaking evangelist testifies to it. Again, that Jesus trusted not Himself to them is also manifest, and no Christian doubts it; for the Gospel says this also, and the same truthspeaking evangelist testifies to it. Why, then, is it that they believed in His name, and yet Jesus did not trust Himself to them? Let us see what follows.

3. “And there was a man of the Pharisees, Nicodemus by name, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Him by night, and said unto Him, Rabbi (you already know that Master is called Rabbi), we know that Thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these signs which Thou doest, except God be with him.” This Nicodemus, then, was of those who had believed in His name, as they saw the signs and prodigies which He did. For this is what he said above: “Now, when He was in Jerusalem at the passover on the feast-day, many believed in His name.” Why did they believe? He goes on to say, “Seeing His signs which He did.” And what says he of Nicodemus? “There was a ruler of the Jews, Nicodemus by name 259 John xviii. 4–6. 260 Rom. iv. 25. 261 John x. 18. 262 Matt. xxvi. 33, 34; Luke xxii. 33, 34. the same came to Him by night, and says to Him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God.” Therefore this man also had believed in His name. And why had he believed? He goes on, “For no man can do these signs which Thou doest, except God be with him.” If, therefore, Nicodemus was of those who had believed in His name, let us now consider, in the case of this Nicodemus, why Jesus did not trust Himself to them. “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Therefore to them who have been born again doth Jesus trust Himself. Behold, those men had believed on Him, and yet Jesus trusted not Himself to them. Such are all catechumens: already they believe in the name of Christ, but Jesus does not trust Himself to them. Give good heed, my beloved, and understand. If we say to a catechumen, Dost thou believe on Christ, he answers, I believe, and signs himself; already he bears the cross of Christ on his forehead, and is not ashamed of the cross of his Lord. Behold, he has believed in His name. Let us ask him, Dost thou eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink the blood of the Son of man? He knows not what we say, because Jesus has not trusted Himself to him.

4. Therefore, since Nicodemus was of that number, he came to the Lord, but came by night; and this perhaps pertains to the matter. Came to the Lord, and came by night; came to the Light, and came in the darkness. But what do they that are born again of water and of the Spirit hear from the apostle? “Ye were once darkness, but now light in the Lord; walk as children of light;”263 and again, “But we who are of the day, let us be sober.”264 Therefore they who are born again were of the night, and are of the day; were darkness, and are light. Now Jesus trusts Himself to them, and they come to Jesus, not by night, like Nicodemus; not in darkness do they seek the day. For such now also profess: Jesus has come near to them, has made salvation in them; for He said, “Except a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he shall not have life in him.”265 And as the catechumens have the sign of the cross on their forehead, they are already of the great house; but from servants let them become sons. For they are something who already belong to the great house. But when did the people Israel eat the manna? After they had passed the Red Sea. And as to what the Red Sea signifies, hear the apostle: “Moreover, brethren, I would not have you ignorant, that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea.” To what purpose passed they through the sea? As if thou wert asking of him, he goes on to say, “And all were baptized by Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”266 Now, if the figure of the sea had such efficacy, how great will be the efficacy of the true form of baptism! If what was done in a figure brought the 263 Eph. v. 8. 264 1 Thess. v. 8. 265 John vi. 54. 266 1 Cor. x. 1. people, after they had crossed over, to the manna, what will Christ impart, in the verity of His baptism, to His own people, brought over through Himself? By His baptism He brings over them that believe; all their sins, the enemies as it were that pursue them, being slain, as all the Egyptians perished in that sea. Whither does He bring over, my brethren? Whither does Jesus bring over by baptism, of which Moses then showed the figure, when he brought them through the sea? Whither? To the manna. What is the manna? “I am,” saith He, “the living bread, which came down from heaven.”267 The faithful receive the manna, having now been brought through the Red Sea? Why Red Sea? Besides sea, why also “red”? That “Red Sea” signified the baptism of Christ. How is the baptism of Christ red, but as consecrated by Christ’s blood? Whither, then, does He lead those that believe and are baptized? To the manna. Behold, “manna,” I say: what the Jews, that people Israel, received, is well known, well known what God had rained on them from heaven; and yet catechumens know not what Christians receive. Let them blush, then, for their ignorance; let them pass through the Red Sea, let them eat the manna, that as they have believed in the name of Jesus, so likewise Jesus may trust Himself to them.

5. Therefore mark, my brethren, what answer this man who came to Jesus by night makes. Although he came to Jesus, yet because he came by night, he still speaks from the darkness of his own flesh. He understands not what he hears from the Lord, understands not what he hears from the Light, “which lighteth every man that cometh into this world.”268 Already hath the Lord said to him, “Except a man be born again, he shall not see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto Him, How can a man be born again when he is old?” The Spirit speaks to him, and he thinks of the flesh. He thinks of his own flesh, because as yet he thinks not of Christ’s flesh. For when the Lord Jesus had said, “Except a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he shall not have life in him,” some who followed Him were offended, and said among themselves, “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” For they fancied that, in saying this, Jesus meant that they would be able to cook Him, after being cut up like a lamb, and eat Him: horrified at His words, they went back, and no more followed Him. Thus speaks the evangelist: “And the Lord Himself remained with the twelve; and they said to Him, Lo, those have left Thee. And He said, Will ye also go away?”—wishing to show them that He was necessary to them, not they necessary to Christ. Let no man fancy that he frightens Christ, when he tells Him that he is a Christian; as if Christ will be more blessed if thou be a Christian. It is a good thing for thee to be a Christian; but if thou be not, it will not be ill for Christ. Hear the voice of the psalm, “I said to the Lord, Thou art my God, since Thou hast no need of my goods.”269 For that reason, “Thou art my God, since of my goods 267 John vi. 51. 268 John i. 9. 269 Ps. xvi. 2. Thou hast no need.” If thou be without God, thou wilt be less; if thou be with God, God will not be greater. Not from thee will He be greater, but thou without Him wilt be less. Grow, therefore, in Him; do not withdraw thyself, that He may, as it were, diminish. Thou wilt be renewed if thou come to Him, wilt suffer loss if thou depart from Him. He remains entire when thou comest to Him, remains entire even when thou fallest away. When, therefore, He had said to His disciples, “Will ye also go away?” Peter, that Rock, answered with the voice of all, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” Pleasantly savored the Lord’s flesh in his mouth. The Lord, however, expounded to them, and said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth.” After He had said, “Except a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he shall not have life in him,” lest they should understand it carnally, He said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing: the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life.”270

6. This Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night, did not savor of this spirit and this life. Saith Jesus to him, “Except a man be born again, he shall not see the kingdom of God.” And he, savoring of his own flesh, while as yet he savored not of the flesh of Christ in his mouth, saith, “How can a man be born a second time, when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” This man knew but one birth, that from Adam and Eve; that which is from God and the Church he knew not yet: he knew only those parents that bring forth to death, knew not yet the parents that bring forth to life; he knew but the parents that bring forth successors, knew not yet the ever-living parents that bring forth those that shall abide.

Whilst there are two births, then, he understood only one. One is of the earth, the other of heaven; one of the flesh, the other of the Spirit; one of mortality, the other of eternity; one of male and female, the other of God and the Church. But these two are each single; there can be no repeating the one or the other. Rightly did Nicodemus understand the birth of the flesh; so understand thou also the birth of the Spirit, as Nicodemus understood the birth of the flesh. What did Nicodemus understand? “Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Thus, whosoever shall tell thee to be spiritually born a second time, answer in the words of Nicodemus, “Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” I am already born of Adam, Adam cannot beget me a second time. I am already born of Christ, Christ cannot beget me again. As there is no repeating from the womb, so neither from baptism.

7. He that is born of the Catholic Church, is born, as it were, of Sarah, of the free woman; he that is born of heresy is, as it were, born of the bond woman, but of Abraham’s seed. Consider, beloved, how great a mystery. God testifies, saying, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Were there not other patriarchs? Before these, 270 John vi. 54–59. was there not holy Noah, who alone of the whole human race, with all his house, was worthy to be delivered from the flood,—he in whom, and in his sons, the Church was prefigured? Borne by wood, they escaped the flood. Then afterwards great men whom we know, whom Holy Scriptures commends, Moses faithful in all his house.271 And yet those three are named, just as if they alone deserved well of him: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: this is my name for ever.”272 Sublime mystery! It is the Lord that is able to open both our mouth and your hearts, that we may speak as He has deigned to reveal, and that you may receive even as it is expedient for you.

8. The patriarchs, then, are these three, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You know that the sons of Jacob were twelve, and thence the people Israel; for Jacob himself is Israel, and the people Israel in twelve tribes pertaining to the twelve sons of Israel. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob three fathers, and one people. The fathers three, as it were in the beginning of the people; three fathers in whom the people was figured: and the former people itself the present people. For in the Jewish people was figured the Christian people. There a figure, here the truth; there a shadow, here the body: as the apostle says, “Now these things happened to them in a figure.” It is the apostle’s voice: “They were written,” saith he, “for our sakes, upon whom the end of the ages is come.”273 Let your mind now recur to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the case of these three, we find that free women bear children, and that bond women bear children: we find there offspring of free women, we find there also offspring of bond women. The bond woman signifies nothing good: “Cast out the bond woman,” saith he, “and her son; for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free.” The apostle recounts this; and he says that in those two sons of Abraham was a figure of the two Testaments, the Old and the New. To the Old Testament belong the lovers of temporal things, the lovers of the world: to the New Testament belong the lovers of eternal life. Hence, that Jerusalem on earth was the shadow of the heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of us all, which is in heaven; and these are the apostle’s words.274 And of that city from which we are absent on our sojourn, you know much, you have now heard much. But we find a wonderful thing in these births, in these fruits of the womb, in these generations of free and bond women: namely, four sorts of men; in which four sorts is completed the figure of the future Christian people, so that what was said in the case of those three patriarchs is not surprising, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” For in the case of all Christians, observe, brethren, either good men are born of evil men, or evil men of good; or good men of good, or evil men of evil: more than these four sorts you cannot find. These 271 Num. xii. 7. 272 Ex. iii. 6, 15. 273 1 Cor. x. 11. 274 Gen. xxi. 10; Gal. iv. 22–30. things I will again repeat: Give heed, keep them, excite your hearts, be not dull; take in, lest ye be taken, how of all Christians there are four sorts. Either of the good are born good, or of the evil, are born evil; or of the good are born evil, or of the evil good. I think it is plain. Of the good, good; if they who baptize are good, and also they who are baptized rightly believe, and are rightly numbered among the members of Christ. Of the evil, evil; if they who baptize are evil, and they who are baptized approach God with a double heart, and do not observe the morals which they hear urged in the Church, so as not to be chaff, but grain, there. How many such there are, you know, beloved. Of the evil, good; sometimes an adulterer baptizes, and he that is baptized is justified. Of the good, evil; sometimes they who baptize are holy, they who are baptized do not desire to keep the way of God.

9. I suppose, brethren, that this is known in the Church, and that what we are saying is manifest by daily examples; but let us consider these things in the case of our fathers before us, how they also had these four kinds. Of the good, good; Ananias baptized Paul. How of the evil, evil? The apostle declares that there were certain preachers of the gospel, who, he says, did not use to preach the gospel with a pure motive, whom, however, he tolerates in the Christian society, saying, “What then, notwithstanding every way, whether by occasion or in truth, Christ is preached, and in this I rejoice.”275 Was he therefore malevolent, and did he rejoice in another’s evil? No, but rejoiced because through evil men the truth was preached, and by the mouths of evil men Christ was preached. If these men baptized any persons like themselves, evil men baptized evil men: if they baptized such as the Lord admonishes, when He says, “Whatsoever they bid you, do; but do not ye after their works,”276 they were evil men that were baptizing good. Good men baptized evil men, as Simon the sorcerer was baptized by Philip, a holy man.277 Therefore these four sorts, my brethren, are known. See, I repeat them again, hold them, count them, think upon them; guard against what is evil; keep what is good. Good men are born of good, when holy men are baptized by holy; evil men are born of evil, when both they that baptize and they that are baptized live unrighteously and ungodly; good men are born of evil, when they are evil that baptize, and they good that are baptized; evil men are born of good, when they are good that baptize, and they evil that are baptized.

10. How do we find this in these three names, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? We hold the bond women among the evil, and the free women among the good. Free women bear the good; Sarah bare Isaac: bond women bear the evil; Hagar bare Ishmael. We have in the case of Abraham alone the two sorts, both when the good are of the good, and also when the evil are of the evil. But where have we evil 275 Phil. i. 18. 276 Matt. xxiii. 3. 277 Acts viii. 13. of good figured? Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, was a free woman: read, She bare twins; one was good, the other evil. Thou hast the Scripture openly declaring by the voice of God, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”278 Rebecca bare those two, Jacob and Esau: one of them is chosen, the other is reprobated; one succeeds to the inheritance, the other is disinherited. God does not make His people of Esau, but makes it of Jacob. The seed is one, those conceived are dissimilar: the womb is one, those born of it are diverse. Was not the free woman that bare Jacob, the same free woman that bare Esau? They strove in the mother’s womb; and when they strove there, it was said to Rebecca, “Two peoples are in thy womb.” Two men, two peoples; a good people, and a bad people: but yet they strive in one womb. How many evil men there are in the Church! And one womb carries them until they are separated in the end: and the good cry out against the evil, and the evil in turn cry out against the good, and both strive together in the bowels of one mother. Will they be always together? There is a going forth to the light in the end; the birth which is here figured in a mystery is declared; and it will then appear that “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”

11. Accordingly we have now found, brethren, of the good, good—of the free woman, Isaac; and of the evil, evil—of the bond woman, Ishmael; and of the good, evil—of Rebecca, Esau: where shall we find of the evil, good? There remains Jacob, that the completion of these four sorts may be concluded in the three patriarchs. Jacob had for wives free women, he had also bond women: the free bear children, as do also the bond, and thus come the twelve sons of Israel. If you count them all, of whom they were born, they were not all of the free women, nor all of the bond women; but yet they were all of one seed. What, then, my brethren? Did not they who were born of the bond women possess the land of promise together with their brethren? We have there found good sons of Jacob born of bond women, and good sons of Jacob born of free women. Their birth of the wombs of bond women was nothing against them, when they knew their seed in the father, and consequently they held the kingdom with their brethren. Therefore, as in the case of Jacob’s sons, that they were born of bond women did not hinder their holding the kingdom, and receiving the land of promise on an equality with their brothers; their birth of bond women did not hinder them, but the father’s seed prevailed: so, whoever are baptized by evil men, appear as if born of bond women; nevertheless, because they are of the seed of the Word of God, which is figured in Jacob, let them not be cast down, they shall possess the inheritance with their brethren. Therefore, let him who is born of the good seed be without fear; only let him not imitate the bond woman, if he is born of a bond woman. Do not thou imitate the evil, proud, bond woman. For how came the sons of Jacob, that were born of bond women, to possess the land of promise with their brethren, whilst Ishmael, born of a bond woman, was cast out 278 Mal. i. 3; Rom. ix. 13. from the inheritance? How, but because he was proud, they were humble? He proudly reared his neck, and wished to seduce his brother while he was playing with him.

12. A great mystery is there. They were playing together, Ishmael and Isaac: Sarah sees them playing, and says to Abraham, “Cast out the bond woman and her son; for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.” And when Abraham was sorrowful, the Lord confirmed to him the saying of his wife. Now here is evidently a mystery, that the event was somehow pregnant with something future. She sees them playing, and says, “Cast out the bond woman and her son.” What is this, brethren? For what evil had Ishmael done to the boy Isaac, in playing with him? That playing was a mocking; that playing signified deception. Now attend, beloved, to this great mystery. The apostle calls it persecution; that playing, that play, he calls persecution: for he says, “But as then he that was born after the flesh, persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also now;” that is, they that are born after the flesh persecute them that are born after the Spirit. Who are born after the flesh? Lovers of the world, lovers of this life. Who are born after the Spirit? Lovers of the kingdom of heaven, lovers of Christ, men that long for eternal life, that worship God freely. They play, and the apostle calls it persecution. For after he said these words, “And as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also now;” the apostle went on, and showed of what persecution, he was speaking: “But what says the Scripture? Cast out the bond woman and her son: for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”279 We search where the Scripture says this, to see whether any persecution on Ishmael’s part against Isaac preceded this; and we find that this was said by Sarah when she saw the boys playing together. The playing which Scripture says that Sarah saw, the apostle calls persecution. Hence, they who seduce you by playing, persecute you the more. “Come,” say they, “Come, be baptized here, here is true baptism for thee.” Do not play, there is one true baptism; that other is play: thou wilt be seduced, and that will be a grievous persecution to thee. It were better for thee to make Ishmael a present of the kingdom; but Ishmael will not have it, for he means to play. Keep thou thy father’s inheritance, and hear this: “Cast out the bond woman and her son; for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”

13. These men, too, dare to say that they are wont to suffer persecution from catholic kings, or from catholic princes. What persecution do they bear? Affliction of body: yet if at times they have suffered, and how they suffered, let themselves know, and settle it with their consciences; still they suffered only affliction of body: the persecution which they cause is more grievous. Beware when Ishmael wishes to play with Isaac, when he fawns on thee, when he offers another baptism: answer him, I have baptism already. For if this baptism is true, he who would give thee another would be mocking thee. Beware of the persecution of 279 Gen. xxi. 9–12; Gal. iv. 30. the soul. For though the party of Donatus has at times suffered somewhat at the hands of catholic princes, it was a bodily suffering, not the suffering of spiritual deception. Hear and see in the very facts of Old Testament history all the signs and indications of things to come. Sarah is found to have afflicted her maid Hagar: Sarah is free. After her maid began to be proud, Sarah complained to Abraham, and said, “Cast out the bond woman;” she has lifted her neck against me. His wife complains of Abraham, as if it were his doing. But Abraham, who was not bound to the maid by lust, but by the duty of begetting children, inasmuch as Sarah had given her to him to have offspring by her, says to her: “Behold, she is thy handmaid; do unto her as thou wilt.” And Sarah grievously afflicted her, and she fled from her face. See, the free woman afflicted the bond woman, and the apostle does not call that a persecution; the slave plays with his master, and he calls it persecution: this afflicting is not called persecution; that playing is. How does it appear to you, brethren? Do you not understand what is signified? Thus, then, when God wills to stir up powers against heretics, against schismatics, against those that scatter the Church, that blow on Christ as if they abhorred Him, that blaspheme baptism, let them not wonder; because God stirs them up, that Hagar may be beaten by Sarah. Let Hagar know herself, and yield her neck: for when, after being humiliated, she departed from her mistress, an angel met her, and said to her, “What is the matter with thee, Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid?” When she complained of her mistress, what did she hear from the angel? “Return to thy mistress.”280 It is for this that she is afflicted, that she may return; and would that she may return, for her offspring, just like the sons of Jacob, will obtain the inheritance with their brethren.

14. But they wonder that Christian powers are roused against detestable scatterers of the Church. Should they not be moved, then? How otherwise should they give an account of their rule to God? Observe, beloved, what I say, that it concerns Christian kings of this world to wish their mother the Church, of which they have been spiritually born, to have peace in their times. We read Daniel’s visions and prophetical histories. The three children praised the Lord in the fire: King Nebuchadnezzar wondered at the children praising God, and at the fire around them doing them no harm: and whilst he wondered, what did King Nebuchadnezzar say, he who was neither a Jew nor circumcised, who had set up his own image and compelled all men to adore it; but, impressed by the praises of the three children when he saw the majesty of God present in the fire what said he? “And I will publish a decree to all tribes and tongues in the whole earth.” What sort of decree? “Whosoever shall speak blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut off, and their houses shall be made a ruin.”281 See how an alien king acts with raging indignation that the God of Israel might not be blasphemed, because He was able to deliver the three children 280 Gen. xvi. 9. 281 Dan. iii. from the fire: and yet they would not have Christian kings to act with severity when Christ is contemptuously rejected, by whom not three children, but the whole world, with these very kings, is delivered from the fire of hell! For those three children, my brethren, were delivered from temporal fire. Is He not the same God who was the God of the Maccabees and the God of the three children? The latter He delivered from the fire; the former did in body perish in the torments of fire, but in mind they remained steadfast in the ordinances of the law. The latter were openly delivered, the former were crowned in secret.282 It is a greater thing to be delivered from the flame of hell than from the furnace of a human power. If, then, Nebuchadnezzar praised and extolled and gave glory to God because He delivered three children from the fire, and gave such glory as to send forth a decree throughout his kingdom, “Whosoever shall speak blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut off, and their houses shall be brought to ruin,” how should not these kings be moved, who observe, not three children delivered from the flame, but their very selves delivered from hell, when they see Christ, by whom they have been delivered, contemptuously spurned in Christians, when they hear it said to a Christian, “Say that thou art not a Christian”? Men are willing to do such deeds, but they do not wish to suffer, at all events, such punishments.

15. For see what they do and what they suffer. They slay souls, they suffer in body: they cause everlasting deaths, and yet they complain that they themselves suffer temporal deaths. And yet what deaths do they suffer? They allege to us some martyrs of theirs in persecution. See, Marculus was hurled headlong from a rock; see, Donatus of Bagaia was thrown into a well. When have the Roman authorities decreed such punishments as casting men down rocks? But what do those of our party reply? What was done I know not; what however do ours tell? That they flung themselves headlong and cast the infamy of it upon the authorities. Let us call to mind the custom of the Roman authorities, and see to whom we are to give credit. Our men declare that those men cast themselves down headlong. If they are not the very disciples of those men, who now cast themselves down precipices, while no man persecutes them, let us not credit the allegation of our men: what wonder if those men did what these are wont to do? The Roman authorities never did employ such punishments: for had they not the power to put them to death openly? But those men, while they wished to be honored when dead, found not a death to make them more famous. In short, whatever the fact was, I do not know. And even if thou hast suffered corporal affliction, O party of Donatus, at the hand of the Catholic Church, as an Hagar thou hast suf fered it at the hand of Sarah; “return to thy mistress.” A point which it was indeed necessary to discuss has detained us somewhat too long to be at all able to expound the whole text of the Gospel Lesson. Let this suffice you in the meantime, beloved brethren, lest, by speaking of other matters, what has 282 2 Macc. vii. been spoken might be shut out from your hearts. Hold fast these things, declare such things; and while yourselves are inflamed, go your way thither, and set on fire them that are cold.

1. We observe, beloved, that the intimation with which we yesterday excited your attention has brought you together with more alacrity, and in greater number than usual; but meanwhile let us, if you please, pay our debt of a discourse on the Gospel Lesson, which comes in due course. You shall then hear, beloved, as well what we have already effected concerning the peace of the Church, and what we hope yet further to accomplish. For the present, then, let the whole attention of your hearts be given to the gospel; let none be thinking of anything else. For if he who attends to it wholly apprehends with difficulty, must not he who divides himself by diverse thoughts let go what he has received? Moreover, you remember, beloved, that on the last Lord’s day, as the Lord deigned to help us, we discoursed of spiritual regeneration. That lesson we have caused to be read to you again, so that what was then left unspoken, we may now, by the aid of your prayers in the name of Christ, fulfill.

2. Spiritual regeneration is one, just as the generation of the flesh is one. And Nicodemus said the truth when he said to the Lord that a man cannot, when he is old, return again into his mother’s womb and be born. He indeed said that a man cannot do this when he is old, as if he could do it even were he an infant. But be he fresh from the womb, or now in years, he cannot possibly return again into the mother’s bowels and be born. But just as for the birth of the flesh, the bowels of woman avail to bring forth the child only once, so for the spiritual birth the bowels of the Church avail that a man be baptized only once. Therefore, in case one should say, “Well, but this man was born in heresy, and this in schism:” all that was cut away, if you remember what was debated to you about our three fathers, of whom God willed to be called the God, not that they were thus alone but because in them alone the figure of the future people was made up in its completeness. For we find one born of a bond woman disinherited, one born of a free woman made heir: again, we find one born of a free woman disinherited, one born of a bond woman made heir. Ishmael, born of a bond woman, disinherited; Isaac, born of a free woman, made heir: Esau, born of a free woman, disinherited; the sons of Jacob, born of bond women, made heirs. Thus, in these three fathers the figure of the whole future people is seen: and not without reason God saith, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: this,” saith He, “is my name for ever.”283 Rather let us remember what was promised to Abraham himself: for this was promised to Isaac, and also to Jacob. What do we find? “In thy seed shall all nations be blessed.”284 At that time the one man believed what as yet he saw not: men now see, and are blinded. What was promised to the one man is fulfilled in the nations; and they who 283 Ex. iii. 6, 15. 284 Gen. xxii. 18. will not see what is already fulfilled, are separating themselves from the communion of the nations. But what avails it them that they will not see? See they do, whether they will or no; the open truth strikes against their closed eyes.

3. It was in answer to Nicodemus, who was of them that had believed on Jesus, that it was said, And Jesus did not trust Himself to them. To certain men, indeed, He did not trust Himself, though they had already believed on Him. Thus it is written, “Many believed in His name, seeing the signs which He did. But Jesus did not trust Himself to them. For He needed not that any should testify of man; for Himself knew what was in man.” Behold, they already believed on Jesus, and yet Jesus did not trust Himself to them. Why? because they were not yet born again of water and of the Spirit. From this have we ex horted and do exhort our brethren the catechumens. For if you ask them, they have already believed in Jesus; but because they have not yet received His flesh and blood, Jesus has not yet trusted Himself to them. What must they do that Jesus may trust Himself to them? They must be born again of water and of the Spirit; the Church that is in travail with them must bring them forth. They have been conceived; they must be brought forth to the light: they have breasts to be nourished at; let them not fear lest, being born, they may be smothered; let them not depart from the mother’s breasts.

4. No man can return into his mother’s bowels and be born again. But some one is born of a bond woman? Well, did they who were born of bond women at the former time, return into the wombs of the free to be born anew? The seed of Abraham was in Ishmael also; but that Abraham might have a son of the bond maid, it was at the advice of his wife. The child was of the husband’s seed, not of the womb, but at the sole pleasure of the wife. Was his birth of a bond woman the reason why he was disinherited? Then, if he was disinherited because he was the son of a bond woman, no sons of bond women would be admitted to the inheritance. The sons of Jacob were admitted to the inheritance; but Ishmael was put out of it, not because born of a bond woman, but because he was proud to his mother, proud to his mother’s son; for his mother was Sarah rather than Hagar. The one gave her womb, the other’s will was added: Abraham would not have done what Sarah willed not: therefore was he Sarah’s son rather. But because he was proud to his brother, proud in playing, that is, in mocking him; what said Sarah? “Cast out the bond woman and her son; for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”285 It was not, therefore, the bowels of the bond woman that caused his rejection, but the slave’s neck. For the free-born is a slave if he is proud, and, what is worse, the slave of a bad mistress, of pride itself. Thus, my brethren, answer the man, that a man cannot be born a second time; answer fearlessly, that a man cannot be born a second time. Whatever is done a second time is mockery, whatever is done a second time is play. It is Ishmael playing, let him be cast out. For Sarah observed 285 Gen. xxi. 9, 10. them playing, saith the Scripture, and said to Abraham, “Cast out the bond woman and her son.” The playing of the boys displeased Sarah. She saw something strange in their play. Do not they who have sons like to see them playing? She saw and disapproved it. Something or other she saw in their play; she saw mockery in it, observed the pride of the slave; she was displeased with it, and she cast him out. The children of bond women, when wicked, are cast out; and the child of the free woman, when an Esau, is cast out. Let none, therefore, presume on his birth of good parents; let none presume on his being baptized by holy men. Let him that is baptized by holy men still beware lest he be not a Jacob, but an Esau. This would I say then, brethren, it is better to be baptized by men that seek their own and love the world, which is what the name of bond woman imports, and to be spiritually seeking the inheritance of Christ, so as to be as it were a son of Jacob by a bond woman, than to be baptized by holy men and to become proud, so as to be an Esau to be cast out, though born of a free woman. Hold ye this fast, brethren. We are not coaxing you, let none of your hope be in us; we flatter neither ourselves nor you; every man bears his own burden. It is our duty to speak, that we be not judged unhappily: yours to hear, and that with the heart, lest what we give be required of you; nay, that when it is required, it may be found a gain, not a loss.

5. The Lord says to Nicodemus, and explains to him: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Thou, says He, understandest a carnal generation, when thou sayest, Can a man return into his mother’s bowels? The birth for the kingdom of God must be of water and of the Spirit. If one is born to the temporal inheritance of a human father, be he born of the bowels of a carnal mother; if one is born to the everlasting inheritance of God as his Father, be he born of the bowels of the Church. A father, as one that will die, begets a son by his wife to succeed him; but God begets of the Church sons, not to succeed Him, but to abide with Himself. And He goes on: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” We are born spiritually then, and spirit we are born by the word and sacrament. The Spirit is present that we may be born; the Spirit is invisibly present whereof thou art born, for thou too must be invisibly born. For He goes on to say: “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest its voice, but knowest not whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.” None sees the Spirit; and how do we hear the Spirit’s voice? There sounds a psalm, it is the Spirit’s voice; the gospel sounds, it is the Spirit’s voice; the divine word sounds, it is the Spirit’s voice. “Thou hearest its voice, and knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” But if thou art born of the Spirit, thou too shall be so, that one who is not born of the Spirit knows not, as for thee, whence thou comest, or whither thou goest. For He said, as He went on, “So is also every one that is born of the Spirit.”

6. “Nicodemus answered and said unto Him, How can these things be?” And, in fact, in the carnal sense, he knew not how. In him occurred what the Lord had said; the Spirit’s voice he heard, but knew not whence it came, and whither it was going. “Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things?” Oh, brethren! what? do we think that the Lord meant to taunt scornfully this master of the Jews? The Lord knew what He was doing; He wished the man to be born of the Spirit. No man is born of the Spirit if he be not humble, for humility itself makes us to be born of the Spirit; “for the Lord is nigh to them that are of broken heart.”286 The man was puffed up with his mastership, and it appeared of some importance to himself that he was a teacher of the Jews. Jesus pulled down his pride, that he might be born of the Spirit: He taunted him as an unlearned man; not that the Lord wished to appear his superior. What comparison can there be, God compared to man, truth to falsehood? Christ greater than Nicodemus! Ought this to be said, can it be said, is it to be thought? If it were said, “Christ is greater than angels,” it were ridiculous: for incomparably greater than every creature is He by whom every creature was made. But yet He rallies the man on his pride: “Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things?” As if He said, Behold, thou knowest nothing, thou art a proud chief; be thou born of the Spirit: for if thou be born of the Spirit, thou wilt keep the ways of God, so as to follow Christ’s humility. So, indeed, is He high above all angels, that, “being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant, being made into the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man: He humbled Himself, being made obedient unto death” (and lest any kind of death should please thee), “even the death of the cross.”287 He hung on the cross, and they scoffed at Him. He could have come down from the cross; but He deferred, that He might rise again from the tomb. He, the Lord, bore with proud slaves;288 the physician with the sick. If He did this, how ought they to act whom it behoves to be born of the Spirit!—if He did this, He who is the true Master in heaven, not of men only, but also of angels. For if the angels are learned, they are so by the Word of God. If they are learned by the Word of God, ask of what they are learned; and you shall find, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The neck of man is done away with, only the hard and stiff neck, that it may be gentle to bear the yoke of Christ, of which it is said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”289

7. And He goes on, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not; how shall ye believe, if I tell you heavenly things?” What earthly things did He tell, brethren? “Except a man be born again;” is that an earthly thing? “The Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest its voice, and knowest not whence it cometh, or whither it goeth;” is that earthly? 286 Ps. xxxiv. 18. 287 Phil. ii. 6–8. 288 Matt. xi. 30. 289 Matt. xi. 30. For if He spoke it of the wind, as some have understood it, when they were asked what earthly thing the Lord meant, when He said, “If I told you earthly things, and ye believe not; how shall ye believe, if I tell you heavenly things?”—when, I say, it was asked of certain men what “earthly thing” the Lord meant, being in difficulty, they said, What He said, “The Spirit bloweth where it listeth,” and “its voice thou hearest, and knowest not whence it cometh, or whither it goeth,” He said concerning the wind. Now what did He name earthly? He was speaking of the spiritual birth; and going on, saith, “So is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Then, brethren, which of us does not see, for example, the south wind going from south to north, or another wind coming from east to west? How, then, know we not whence it cometh and whither it goeth? What earthly thing, then, did He tell, which men did not believe? Was it that which He had said about raising the temple again? Surely, for He had received His body of the earth, and that earth taken of the earthly body He was preparing to raise up. They did not believe Him as about to raise up earth. “If I told you earthly things,” saith He, “and ye believe not; how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things?” That is, if ye believe not that I can raise up the temple cast down by you, how shall ye believe that men can be regenerated by the Spirit?

8. And He goes on: “And no man hath ascended into heaven, but He that came down from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.” Behold, He was here, and was also in heaven; was here in His flesh, in heaven by His divinity; yea, everywhere by His divinity. Born of a mother, not quitting the Father. Two nativities of Christ are understood: one divine, the other human: one, that by which we were to be made; the other, that by which we were to be made anew: both marvellous; that without mother, this without father. But because He had taken a body of Adam,—for Mary was of Adam,—and was about to raise that same body again, it was an earthly thing He had said in saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But this was a heavenly thing, when He said, “Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he shall not see the kingdom of God.” Come then, brethren! God has willed to be the Son of man; and willed men to be sons of God. He came down for our sakes; let us ascend for His sake. For He alone descended and ascended, He who saith, “No man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven.” Are they not therefore to ascend into heaven whom He makes sons of God? Certainly they are: this is the promise to us, “They shall be equal to the angels of God.”290 Then how is it that no man ascends, but He that descended? Because one only descended, only one ascends. What of the rest? What are we to understand, but that they shall be His members, that one may ascend? Therefore it follows that “no man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.” Dost thou marvel that He was both here and in heaven? Such He made His disciples. Hear the Apostle Paul saying, “But our conver- 290 Matt. xxii. 30. sation is in heaven.”291 If the Apostle Paul, a man, walked in the flesh on earth, and yet had his conversation in heaven, was the God of heaven and earth not able to be both in heaven and on earth?

9. Therefore, if none but He descended and ascended, what hope is there for the rest? The hope for the rest is this, that He came down in order that in Him and with Him they might be one, who should ascend through Him. “He saith not, And to seeds,” saith the apostle, “as in many; but as in one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” And to believers he saith, “And ye are Christ’s; and if Christ’s, then are Abraham’s seed.” 292 What he said to be one, that he said that we all are. Hence, in the Psalms, many sometimes sing, to show that one is made of many; sometimes one sings, to show what is made of many. Therefore was it only one that was healed in the pool; and whoever else went down into it was not healed. Now this one shows forth the oneness of the Church. Woe to them who hate unity, and make to themselves parties among men! Let them hear him who wished to make them one, in one, for one: let them hear him who says, Be not ye making many: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. But neither he that planteth is anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.”293 They were saying, “I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas.” And he says, “Is Christ divided?” Be ye in one, be one thing, be one person: “No man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven.” Lo! we wish to be thine, they said to Paul. And he said to them, I will not that ye be Paul’s, but be ye His whose is Paul together with you.

10. For He came down and died, and by that death delivered us from death: being slain by death, He slew death. And you know, brethren, that this death entered into the world through the devil’s envy. “God made not death,” saith the Scripture, “nor delights He in the destruction of the living; but He created all things to be.” But what saith it here? “But by the devil’s envy, death entered into the whole world.” 294 To the death offered for our entertainment by the devil, man would not come by constraint; for the devil had not the power of forcing, but only cunning to persuade. Hadst thou not consented, the devil had brought in nothing: thy own consenting, O man, led thee to death. Of the mortal are mortals born; from immortals we are become mortals. From Adam all men are mortal; but Jesus the Son of God, the Word of God, by which all things were made, the only Son equal with the Father, was made mortal: “for the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

11. He endured death, then; but death He hanged on the cross, and mortal men are delivered from death. The Lord calls to mind a great matter, which was done in a figure with 291 Phil. iii. 20. 292 Gal. iii. 16, 29. 293 1 Cor. iii. 6, 7. 294 Wisd. i. 2. them of old: “And as Moses,” saith He, “lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; that every one who believeth on Him may not perish, but have everlasting life.” A great mystery is here, as they who read know. Again, let them hear, as well they who have not read as they who have forgotten what perhaps they had heard or read. The people Israel were fallen helplessly in the wilderness by the bite of serpents; they suffered a great calamity by many deaths: for it was the stroke of God correcting and scourging them that He might instruct them. In this was shown a great mystery, the figure of a thing to come: the Lord Himself testifies in this passage, so that no man can give another interpretation than that which the truth indicates concerning itself. Now Moses was ordered by the Lord to make a brazen serpent, and to raise it on a pole in the wilderness, and to admonish the people Israel, that, when any had been bitten by a serpent, he should look to that serpent raised up on the pole. This was done: men were bitten; they looked and were healed.295 What are the biting serpents? Sins, from the mortality of the flesh. What is the serpent lifted up? The Lord’s death on the cross. For as death came by the serpent, it was figured by the image of a serpent. The serpent’s bite was deadly, the Lord’s death is lifegiving. A serpent is gazed on that the serpent may have no power. What is this? A death is gazed on, that death may have no power. But whose death? The death of life: if it may be said, the death of life; ay, for it may be said, but said wonderfully. But should it not be spoken, seeing it was a thing to be done? Shall I hesitate to utter that which the Lord has deigned to do for me? Is not Christ the life? And yet Christ hung on the cross. Is not Christ life? And yet Christ was dead. But in Christ’s death, death died. Life dead slew death; the fullness of life swallowed up death; death was absorbed in the body of Christ. So also shall we say in the resurrection, when now triumphant we shall sing, “Where, O death, is thy contest? Where, O death, is thy sting?”296 Meanwhile brethren, that we may be healed from sin, let us now gaze on Christ crucified; for “as Moses,” saith He, “lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth on Him may not perish, but have everlasting life.” Just as they who looked on that serpent perished not by the serpent’s bites, so they who look in faith on Christ’s death are healed from the bites of sins. But those were healed from death to temporal life; whilst here He saith, “that they may have everlasting life.” Now there is this difference between the figurative image and the real thing: the figure procured temporal life; the reality, of which that was the figure, procures eternal life.

12. “For God sent not His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world through Him may be saved.” So far, then, as it lies in the physician, He is come to heal the sick. He that will not observe the orders of the physician destroys himself. He is come a Sa- 295 Num. xxi. 6–9. 296 1 Cor. xv. 54. viour to the world: why is he called the Saviour of the world, but that He is come to save the world, not to judge the world? Thou wilt not be saved by Him; thou shalt be judged of thyself. And why do I say, “shall be judged”? See what He says: “He that believeth on Him is not judged, but he that believeth not.” What dost thou expect He is going to say, but “is judged”? “Already,” saith He, “has been judged.” The judgment has not yet appeared, but already it has taken place. For the Lord knoweth them that are His: He knows who are persevering for the crown, and who for the flame; knows the wheat on His threshing-floor, and knows the chaff; knows the good corn, and knows the tares. He that believeth not is already judged. Why judged? “Because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.”

13. “And this is the judgment, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” My brethren, whose works does the Lord find to be good? The works of none: He finds the works of all evil. How is it, then, that some have done the truth, and are come to the light? For this is what follows: “But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” In what way have some done a good work to come to the light, namely, to Christ? And how have some loved darkness? For if He finds all men sinners, and healeth all of sin, and that serpent in which the Lord’s death was figured healed them that were bitten, and on account of the serpent’s bite the serpent was set up, namely, the Lord’s death on account of mortal men, whom He finds unrighteous; how are we to understand that “this is the judgment, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil”? How is this? Whose works, in fact, are good? Hast Thou not come to justify the ungodly? “But they loved,” saith He, “darkness rather than light.” There He laid the emphasis: for many loved their sins; many confessed their sins; and he who confesses his sins, and accuses them, doth now work with God. God accuses thy sins: and if thou also accusest, thou art united to God. There are, as it were, two things, man and sinner. That thou art called man, is God’s doing; that thou art called sinner, is man’s own doing. Blot out what thou hast done, that God may save what He has done. It behoves thee to hate thine own work in thee, and to love the work of God in thee. And when thy own deeds will begin to displease thee, from that time thy good works begin, as thou findest fault with thy evil works. The confession of evil works is the beginning of good works. Thou doest the truth, and comest to the light. How is it thou doest the truth? Thou dost not caress, nor soothe, nor flatter thyself; nor say, “I am righteous,” whilst thou art unrighteous: thus, thou beginnest to do the truth. Thou comest to the light, that thy works may be made manifest that they are wrought in God; for thy sin, the very thing that has given thee displeasure, would not have displeased thee, if God did not shine into thee, and His truth show it thee. But he that loves his sins, even after being admonished, hates the light admonishing him, and flees from it, that his works which he loves may not be proved to be evil. But he that doeth truth accuses his evil works in himself, spares not himself, forgives not himself, that God may forgive him: for that which he desires God to forgive, he himself acknowledges, and he comes to the light; to which he is thankful for showing him what he should hate in himself. He says to God, “Turn away Thy face from my sins:” yet with what countenance says it, unless he adds, “For I acknowledge mine iniquity, and my sin is ever before me?”297 Be that before thyself which thou desirest not to be before God. But if thou wilt put thy sin behind thee, God will thrust it back before thine eyes; and this He will do at a time when there will be no more fruit of repentance.

14. Run, my brethren, lest the darkness lay hold of you. Awake to your salvation, awake while there is time; let none be kept back from the temple of God, none kept back from the work of the Lord, none called away from continual prayer, none be defrauded of wonted devotion. Awake, then, while it is day: the day shines, Christ is the day. He is ready to forgive sins, but to them that acknowledge them; ready to punish the self-defenders, who boast that they are righteous, and think themselves to be something when they are nothing. But he that walks in His love and mercy, even being free from those great and deadly sins, such crimes as murder, theft, adultery; still, because of those which seem to be minute sins, of tongue, or of thought, or of intemperance in things permitted, he doeth the truth in confession, and cometh to the light in good works: since many minute sins, if they be neglected, kill. Minute are the drops that swell the rivers; minute are the grains of sand; but if much sand is put together, the heap presses and crushes. Bilge-water neglected in the hold does the same thing as a rushing wave. Gradually it leaks in through the hold; and by long leaking in and no pumping out, it sinks the ship. Now what is this pumping out, but by good works, by sighing, fasting, giving, forgiving, so to effect that sins may not overwhelm us? The path of this life, however, is troublesome, full of temptations: in prosperity, let it not lift us up; in adversity, let it not crush us. He who gave the happiness of this world gave it for thy comfort, not for thy ruin. Again, He who scourgeth thee in this life, doeth it for thy improvement, not for thy condemnation. Bear the Father that corrects thee for thy training, lest thou feel the judge in punishing thee. These things we tell you every day, and they must be often said, because they are good and wholesome.

1. The course of reading from the Gospel of John, as those of you who are concerned for your own progress may remember, so proceeds in regular order, that the passage which has now been read comes before us for exposition to-day. You remember that we have expounded it, in the preceding discourses, from the very beginning of the Gospel, as far as the lesson of to-day. And though perhaps you have forgotten much of it, at least it remains in your memory that we have done our part in it. What you have heard from it about the baptism of John, even though you retain not all, yet I believe you have heard that which you may retain. Also, what was said as to why the Holy Spirit appeared in the shape of a dove; and how that most knotty question was solved, namely, what was that something in the Lord which John did not know, and which he learned by means of the dove, whilst already John knew Him, since, as Jesus came to be baptized, he said to Him, “I ought to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?” when the Lord answered him, “Suffer it now, that all righteousness may be fulfilled.”298

2. Now, therefore, the order of our reading obliges us to return to that same John. The same is he who was prophesied of by Isaiah, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye a way for the Lord, make His paths straight.”299 Such testimony gave he to his Lord and (for the Lord deemed him worthy) his friend. And the Lord, even his friend, did also Himself bear witness to John. For concerning John He said, “Among them that are born of women, there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.” But as He put Himself before John, in that wherein He was greater, He was God. “But he that is less,” saith He, “in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” 300 Less in age; greater in power, in deity, in majesty, in brightness: even as “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the preceding passages, however, John had given testimony to the Lord, in such wise that he did indeed call Him Son of God, but said not that He was God, nor yet denied it: he was silent as to His being God, not denied that He was God; but yet he was not altogether silent as to His being God, for perhaps we find this in the lesson of to-day. He had called Him Son of God; but men, too, have been called sons of God. He had declared Him to be of such excellence, that he was not himself worthy to loose the latchet of His shoe. Now this greatness gives us much to understand: whose shoe-latchet he was not worthy to loose, he than whom none greater had arisen among them that are born of women. He was more, indeed, than all men and angels. For we find an angel forbidding 298 Matt. iii. 14. 299 Isa. xl. 3. 300 Matt. xi. 11. a man to fall at his feet. For example, when in the Apocalypse an angel was showing certain things to John, the writer of this Gospel, John, terrified at the greatness of the vision, fell down at the angel’s feet. But said the angel, “Rise; see thou do it not: worship God, for I am thy fellow-servant, and the brethren’s.”301 An angel, then, forbade a man to fall down at his feet. Is it not manifest that He must be above all angels, for whom a man, such that a greater than he has not risen among them that are born of women, declares himself to be not worthy to loose the latchet of His shoe?

3. John, however, may say something more evidently, that our Lord Jesus Christ is God. We may find this in the present passage, that it is perhaps of Him we have been singing, “The Lord reigned over all the earth;” against which they are deaf who imagine that He reigns only in Africa. But let them not suppose that it is not of Christ it is spoken when it is said, “God reigned over all the earth.” For who else is our King, but our Lord Jesus Christ? It is He that is our King. And what have you heard in the same psalm, in the verse just sung? “Sing praises to our God, sing praises: sing praises to our King, sing praises.” Whom he called God, the same he called our King: “Sing praises to our God, sing praises: sing praises to our King, sing ye praises with understanding.” And that thou shouldest not understand Him to whom thou singest praises to reign in one part, he says, “For God is King of all the earth.” 302 And how is He King of all the earth, who appeared in one part of the earth, in Jerusalem, in Judea, walking among men, born, sucking the breast, growing, eating, drinking, waking, sleeping, sitting at a well, wearied; laid hold of, scourged, spat upon, crowned with thorns, hanged on a tree, wounded with a spear, dead, buried? How then King of all the earth? What was seen locally was flesh, to carnal eyes only flesh was visible; the immortal majesty was concealed in mortal flesh. And with what eyes shall we be able to behold the immortal majesty, after penetrating through the structure of the flesh? There is another eye, there is an inner eye. Tobias, for example, was not without eyes, when, blind in his bodily eyes, he was giving precepts of life to his son.303 The son was holding the father’s hand, that the father might walk with his feet, whilst the father was giving the son counsel to walk in the way of righteousness. Here I see eyes, and there I understand eyes. And better are the eyes of him that gives counsel of life, than his who holds the hand. Such eyes Jesus also required when He said to Philip, “Am I so long time with you, and ye have not known me?” Such eyes He required when He said, “Philip, he that seeth me, seeth the Father.” These are the eyes of the understanding, these are the eyes of the mind. It is for that reason that the 301 Rev. xxii. 8, 9. 302 Ps. xlvii. 3–8. 303 Tobit iv. psalm, when it had said, “For God is King of all the earth,” immediately added, “Sing ye praises with understanding.” For in that I say, “Sing ye praises to our God,” I say that God is our King. But yet our King you have seen among men, as man; you have seen Him suffering, crucified, dead: there was in that flesh something concealed, which you might have seen with eyes of flesh. What was there concealed? “Sing ye praises with understanding.” Do not seek to see with the eyes what is beheld by the mind. “Sing praises” with the tongue, for He is among you as flesh; but because “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” render the sound to the flesh, render to God the gaze of the mind. “Sing ye praises with understanding,” and you see that the “Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

4. Now let John also declare his witness: “After these things came Jesus and His disciples into the land of Judea; and there He tarried with them, and baptized.” Being baptized, He baptized. Not with that baptism with which He was baptized did He baptize. The Lord, being baptized by a servant, gives baptism, showing the path of humility and leading to the baptism of the Lord, that is, His own baptism, by giving an example of humility, in not Himself refusing baptism from a servant. And in the baptism by a servant, a way was prepared for the Lord; the Lord also being baptized, made Himself a way for them that come to Him. Let us hear Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” If thou seekest truth, keep the way, for the way and the truth are the same. The way that thou art going is the same as the whither thou art going: thou art not going by a way as one thing, to an object as another thing; not coming to Christ by something else as a way, thou comest to Christ by Christ. How by Christ to Christ? By Christ the man, to Christ God; by the Word made flesh, to the Word which in the beginning was God with God; from that which man ate, to that which angels daily eat. For so it is written, “He gave them bread of heaven: man ate the bread of angels.”304 What is the bread of angels? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” How has man eaten the bread of angels? “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

5. But though we have said that angels eat, do not fancy, brethren, that this is done with teeth. For if you think so, God, of whom the angels eat, is as it were torn in pieces. Who tears righteousness in pieces? But still, some one asks me, And who is it that can eat righteousness? Well, how is it said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”? The food which thou eatest carnally perishes, in order to refresh thee; to repair thy waste it is consumed: eat righteousness; and while thou art refreshed, it continues entire. Just as by seeing this corporeal light, these eyes of ours are refreshed, and yet it is a corporeal thing that is seen by corporeal eyes. Many there have been, when too long in darkness, whose eyesight is weakened by fasting, as it were, from light. The eyes, deprived of their food (for they feed on light), become wearied by fasting, and weakened, 304 Ps. lxxviii. 24. so that they cannot bear to see the light by which they are refreshed; and if the light is too long absent, they are quenched, and the very sense of sight dies as it were in them. What then? Does the light become less, because so many eyes are daily fed by it? Thy eyes are refreshed, and the light remains entire. As God was able to show this in the case of corporeal light to corporeal eyes, does He not show that other light to clean hearts as unwearied, continuing entire, and in no respect failing? What light? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Let us see if this is light. “For with Thee is the fountain of light, and in Thy light shall we see light.” On earth, fountain is one thing, light another. When thirsting, thou seekest a fountain, and to get to the fountain thou seekest light; and if it is not day, thou lightest a lamp to get to the fountain. That fountain is the very light: to the thirsting a fountain, to the blind a light. Let the eyes be opened to see the light, let the lips of the heart be opened to drink of the fountain; that which thou drinkest, thou seest, thou hearest. God becomes all to thee; for He is to thee the whole of these things which thou lovest. If thou regardest things visible, neither is God bread, nor is God water, nor is God this light, nor is He garment nor house. For all these are things visible, and single separate things. What bread is, water is not; and what a garment is, a house is not; and what these things are, God is not, for they are visible things. God is all this to thee: if thou hungerest, He is bread to thee; if thou thirstest, He is water to thee; if thou art in darkness, He is light to thee: for He remains incorruptible. If thou art naked, He is a garment of immortality to thee, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immor- tality. All things can be said of God, and nothing is worthily said of God. Nothing is wider than this poverty of expression. Thou seekest a fitting name for Him, thou canst not find it; thou seekest to speak of Him in any way soever, thou findest that He is all. What likeness have the lamb and the lion? Both is said of Christ. “Behold the Lamb of God!” How a lion? “The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed.”305

6. Let us hear John: “Jesus baptized.” We said that Jesus baptized. How Jesus? How the Lord? How the Son of God? How the Word? Well, but the Word was made flesh. “And John also was baptizing in Ænon, near to Salim.” A certain lake, “Ænon.”306 How do we know it was a lake? “Because there was much water there, and they came and were baptized. For John was not yet cast into prison.” If you remember (see, I say it again), I told you why John baptized: because the Lord must needs be baptized. And why must the Lord be baptized? Because many there would be to despise baptism, that they might appear to be endowed with greater grace than they saw other believers endowed with. For example, a catechumen, now living continently, might despise a married person, and say of himself that he was better than the other believer. That catechumen might possibly say in his heart, “What need have 305 Rev. v. 5. 306 [An error.] I to receive baptism, to have just what that other man has, than whom I am already better?” Therefore, lest that neck of pride should hurl to destruction certain men much elated with the merits of their own righteousness, the Lord was willing to be baptized by a servant, as if addressing His chief sons: “Why do you extol yourselves? Why lift yourselves up because you have, one prudence, another learning, another chastity, another the courage of patience? Can you possibly have as much as I who gave you these? And yet I was baptized by a servant, you disdain to be baptized by the Lord.” This is the sense of “to fulfill all righteousness.”

7. But some one will say, “It were enough, then, that John baptized only the Lord; what need was there for others to be baptized by John?” Now we have said this too, that if John had baptized only the Lord, men would not be without this thought, that John had a better baptism than the Lord had. They would say, in fact, “So great was the baptism of John, that Christ alone was worthy to be baptized therewith.” Therefore, to show that the baptism which the Lord was to give was better than that of John,—that the one might be understood as that of a servant, the other as that of the Lord,—the Lord was baptized to give an example of humility; but He was not the only one baptized by John, lest John’s baptism should appear to be better than the baptism of the Lord. To this end, however, our Lord Jesus Christ showed the way, as you have heard, brethren, lest any man, arrogating to himself that he has abundance of some particular grace, should disdain to be baptized with the baptism of the Lord. For whatever the catechumen’s proficiency, he still carries the load of his iniquity: it is not forgiven him until he shall have come to baptism. Just as the people Israel were not rid of the Egyptians until they had come to the Red Sea, so no man is rid of the pressure of sins until he has come to the font of baptism.

8. “Then there arose a question on the part of John’s disciples with the Jews about purifying.” John baptized, Christ baptized. John’s disciples were moved; there was a running after Christ, people were coming to John. Those who came to John, he sent to Jesus to be baptized; but they who were baptized by Christ were not sent to John. John’s disciples were alarmed, and began to dispute with the Jews, as usually happens. Understand the Jews to have declared that Christ was greater, and that to His baptism people ought to have recourse. John’s disciples, not yet understanding this, defended John’s baptism. They came to John himself, that he might solve the question. Understand, beloved. And here we are given to see the use of humility, and, when people were erring in the subject of dispute, are shown whether John desired to glory in himself. Now probably he said, “You say the truth, you contend rightly; mine is the better baptism, I baptized Christ Himself.” John could say this after Christ was baptized. If he wished to exalt himself, what an opportunity he had to do so! But he knew better before whom to humble himself: to Him whom he knew to have come after himself by birth, he willingly yielded precedence by confessing Him. He understood his own salvation to be in Christ. He had already said above, “We all have received out of His fullness;” and this is to confess Him to be God. For how can all men receive of His fullness, if He be not God? For if He is man in such wise that He is not God, then Himself also receives of the fullness of God, and so is not God. But if all men receive of His fullness, He is the fountain, they are drinkers. They that drink of a fountain, both thirst and drink. The fountain never thirsts; it has never need of itself. Men need a fountain. With thirsty stomachs and parched lips they run to the fountain to be refreshed. The fountain flows to refresh, so does the Lord Jesus.

9. Let us see, then, what answer John gives: “They came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold the same baptizeth, and all men come to him:” that is, What sayest thou? Ought they not to be hindered, that they may rather come to thee? “He answered and said, A man cannot receive anything, except it be given him from heaven.” Of whom, think you, had John said this? Of himself. “As a man, I received,” saith he, “from heaven.” Note, my beloved: “A man cannot receive anything, except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ.” As much as to say, “Why do ye deceive yourselves? See how you have put this question before me. What have you said to me? ‘Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness.’ Then you know what sort of witness I bare to Him. Am I now to say that He is not the same whom I declared Him to be? And because I received somewhat from heaven, in order to be something, do you wish me to be empty of it, so as to speak against the truth? ‘A man cannot receive anything, except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said I am not the Christ.’” Thou art not the Christ; but what if thou art greater than He since thou didst baptize Him? “I am sent:” I am the herald, He is the Judge.

10. But hear a far stronger, a far more expressive testimony. See ye what it is we are treating of; see ye that to love any person in place of Christ is adultery. Why do I say this? Let us attend to the voice of John. People could be mistaken in him, could think him to be the person he was not. He rejects the false honor, in order to hold the truth complete. See what he declares Christ to be; what does he say himself is? “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom.” Be chaste, love the bridegroom. But what art thou, who sayest to us, “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom? But the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.” The Lord our God will help me in proportion to the tumult of my heart, for it is full of sadness, to utter the grief I feel; but I beseech you by Christ Himself to imagine in thought what it will not be possible for me to utter; for I know that my grief cannot be expressed with befitting impressiveness. Now I see many adulterers who desire to get possession of the bride, purchased at so great a price, loved while deformed that she might be made fair, having been purchased and delivered and adorned by such an one; and those adulterers strive with their words to be loved instead of the bridegroom. Of that One it is said, “This is He that baptizeth.”307 Who is he 307 John i. 33. that goes forth from us and says, “I am he that baptizeth”? Who is he that goes forth from us and says, “That is holy which I give”? Who is he that goes hence and says, “It is good for thee to be born of me”? Let us hear the friend of the bridegroom, not the adulterers against the bridegroom; let us hear one jealous, but not for himself.

11. Brethen, return in thought to your own homes. I speak of carnal, I speak of earthly things; I speak after the manner of men, for the infirmity of your flesh. Many of you have, many of you wish to have, many, though you wish not to have, still have had wives; many who do not at all wish to have wives, are born of the wives of your fathers. This is a feeling that touches every heart. There is no man so alien from mankind in human affairs as not to feel what I say. Suppose that a man, having set out on a journey, had commended his bride to the care of his friend: “See, I pray thee, thou art my dear friend; see to it, lest in my absence some other may perchance be loved in my stead.” Then what sort of a person must he be, who, while the guardian of the bride or wife of his friend, does indeed endeavor that none other be loved, but if he wishes himself to be loved instead of his friend, and desires to enjoy her who was committed to his care, how detestable must he appear to all mankind! Let him see her gazing out of the window, or joking with some one somewhat too heedlessly, he forbids her as one who is jealous. I see him jealous, but let me see for whom he is jealous; whether for his absent friend or for his present self. Think that our Lord Jesus Christ has done this. He has committed His bride to the care of His friend; He has set out on a journey to a far country to receive a kingdom, as He says Himself in the Gospel, 308 but yet is present in His majesty. Let the friend who has gone beyond the sea be deceived; and if he is deceived, woe to him who deceives! Why do men attempt to deceive God,—God who looks at the hearts of all, and searches the secrets of all? But some heretic shows himself, and says, “’Tis I that give, ’tis I that sanctify, ’tis I that justify; go not thou to that other sect.” He does well indeed to be jealous, but see for whom. “Go not thou to idols,” saith he,—he is rightly jealous; “nor to diviners,”—still rightly jealous. Let us see for whom he is jealous: “What I give is holy, because it is I that give it; he is baptized whom I baptize; he whom I baptize not is not baptized.” Hear thou the friend of the bridegroom, learn to be jealous for thy friend; hear His voice who is “He that baptizeth.” Why desire to arrogate to thyself what is not thine? Is he so very absent who has left here his bride? Knowest thou not, that He who rose from the dead is sitting at the right hand of the Father? If the Jews despised Him hanging on the tree, dost thou despise Him sitting in heaven? Be assured, beloved, that I suffer great grief of this matter; but, as I have said, I leave the rest to your thoughts. I cannot utter it if I speak the whole day. If I bewail it the whole day, I do not enough. I cannot utter it, if I should have, as the prophet says, “a fountain of tears;” and were I changed into tears, and to become all tears, were I turned into tongues, and to become all tongues, it were not enough.

1. This lesson from the holy Gospel shows us the excellency of our Lord Jesus Christ’s divinity, and the humility of the man who earned the title of the Bridegroom’s friend; that we may distinguish between the man who is man, and the Man who is God. For the Man who is God is our Lord Jesus Christ, God before all ages, Man in the age of our world: God of the Father, man of the Virgin, yet one and the same Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, So of God, God and man. But John, a man of distinguished grace, was sent before Him, a man enlightened by Him who is the Light. For of John it is said, “He was not the Light, but that he should bear witness of the Light.” He may himself be called a light indeed, and rightly so; but an enlightened, not an enlightening light. The light that enlightens, and that which is enlightened, are different things: for even our eyes are called lights (lumina), and yet when we open them in the dark, they do not see. But the light that enlightens is a light both from itself and for itself, and does not need another light for its shining; but all the rest need it, that they may shine.

2. Accordingly John confessed Him: as you have heard that when Jesus was making many disciples, and they reported to John as if to excite him to jealousy,—for they told the matter as if moved by envy, “Lo, he is making more disciples than thou,”—John confessed what he was, and thereby merited to belong to Him, because he dared not affirm himself to be that which Jesus is. Now this is what John said: “A man cannot receive anything, except it be given him from heaven.” Therefore Christ gives, man receives. “Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. He that hath the bride is the Bridegroom; but the friend of the Bridegroom, who standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice.” Not of himself did he give himself joy. He that will have joy of himself shall be sad; but he that will have his joy of God will ever rejoice, because God is everlasting. Dost thou desire to have everlasting joy? Cleave to Him who is everlasting. Such an one John declared himself to be. “Because of the Bridegroom’s voice, the friend of the Bridegroom rejoiceth,” not because of his own voice, and “standeth and heareth.” Therefore, if he falls, he heareth Him not: for of a certain one who fell it is said, “And he stood not in the truth;”315 this is said of the devil. It behoves the Bridegroom’s friend, then, “to stand and to hear.” What is it to stand? It is to abide in His grace, which he received. And he hears a voice at which he rejoices. Such was John: he knew whereof he rejoiced; he did not arrogate to himself to be what he was not; he knew himself as one enlightened, not the enlightener. “But that was the true Light,” saith the evangelist, “that lighteneth every man coming into this world.” If “every man,” then also John himself; for 315 John viii. 44. he too is of men. Moreover, although none hath arisen among them that are born of women greater than John, yet he was himself one of those that are born of women. Is he to be compared with Him who, because He willed it, was born by a singular and extraordinary birth? For both generations of the Lord are unexampled, both the divine and the human: by the divine He has no mother; by the human, no father. Therefore John was but one of the rest: of greater grace, however, so that of those born of women none arose greater than he; so great a testimony he gave to our Lord Jesus Christ as to call Him the Bridegroom, and himself the Bridegroom’s friend, not worthy however to loose the latchet of the Bridegroom’s shoe. You have already heard much on this point, beloved: let us look to what follows; for it is somewhat hard to understand. But as John himself says, that “no man can receive anything, except it be given him from heaven,” whatever we shall not have understood, let us ask Him who gives from heaven: for we are men, and cannot receive anything, except He, who is not man, give it us.

3. Now this is what follows: and John says, “This my joy therefore is fulfilled.” What is his joy? To rejoice at the Bridegroom’s voice. It is fulfilled in me, I have my grace; more I do not assume to myself, lest also I lose what I have received. What is this joy? “With joy rejoiceth for the Bridegroom’s voice.” A man may understand, then, that he ought not to rejoice of his own wisdom, but of the wisdom which he has received from God. Let him ask nothing more, and he loses not what he found. For many, in that they affirmed themselves to be wise, became fools. The apostle convicts them, and says of them, “Because that which is known of God is manifest to them; for God has showed it unto them.” Hear ye what he says of certain unthankful, ungodly men: “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are seen, being understood by the things that are made, His eternal power likewise, and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” Why without excuse? “Because, knowing God” (he said not, “because they knew Him not”), “they glorified Him not as God, nor were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened: professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”316 If they had known God, they had known at the same time that God, and none other, had made them wise; and they would not then attribute to themselves that which they did not have from themselves, but to Him from whom they had received it. But by their unthankfulness they became fools. Therefore, what God gave freely, He took from the unthankful. John would not be this; he would be thankful: he confessed to have received, and declared that he rejoiced for the Bridegroom’s voice, saying, “Therefore this my joy is fulfilled.”

4. “He must increase, but I must decrease.” What is this? He must be exalted, but I must be humbled. How is Jesus to increase? How is God to increase? The perfect does not increase. God neither increases nor decreases. For if He increases, He is not perfect; if He decreases, 316 Rom. i. 19–22. he is not God. And how can Jesus increase, being God? If to man’s estate, since He deigned to be man and was a child; and, though the Word of God, lay an infant in a manger; and, though His mother’s Creator, yet sucked the milk of infancy of her: then Jesus having grown in age of the flesh, that perhaps is the reason why it is said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” But why in this? As regards the flesh, John and Jesus were of the same age, there being six months between them: they had grown up together; and if our Lord Jesus Christ had willed to be here longer before His death, and that John should be here with Him, then, as they had grown up together, so would they have grown old together: in what way, then, “He must increase but I must decrease”? Above all, our Lord Jesus Christ being now thirty years old, does a man who is already thirty years old still grow? From that same age, men begin to go downward, and to decline to graver age, thence to old age. Again, even had they both been lads, he would not have said, “He must increase,” but, We must increase together. But now each is thirty years of age. The interval of six months makes no difference in age; the difference is discovered by reading rather than by the look of the persons.

5. What means, then, “He must increase, but I must decrease”? This is a great mystery! Before the Lord Jesus came, men were glorying of themselves; He came a man, to lessen man’s glory, and to increase the glory of God. Now He came without sin, and found all men in sin. If thus He came to put away sin, God may freely give, man may confess. For man’s confession is man’s lowliness: God’s pity is God’s loftiness. Therefore, since He came to forgive man his sins, let man acknowledge his own lowliness and let God show His pity. “He must increase, but I must decrease:” that is, He must give, but I must receive; He must be glorified, but I must confess. Let man know his own condition, and confess to God; and hear the apostle as he says to a proud, elated man, bent on extolling himself: “What hast thou that thou didst not receive? And if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou didst not receive it?” 317 Then let man understand that he has received; and when he would call that his own which is not his, let him decrease: for it is good for him that God be glorified in him. Let him decrease in himself, that he may be increased in God. These testimonies and this truth, Christ and John signified by their deaths. For John was lessened by the Head: Christ was exalted on the cross; so that even there it appeared what this is, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Again, Christ was born when the days were just beginning to lengthen; John was born when they began to shorten. Thus their very creation and deaths testify to the words of John, when he says, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” May the glory of God then increase in us, and our own glory decrease, that even ours may increase in God! For this is what the apostle says, this is what Holy Scripture says: “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”318 Wilt thou glory in thyself? Thou wilt grow; but grow worse in thy evil. 317 1 Cor. iv. 7. 318 1 Cor. i. 31. For whoso grows worse is justly decreased. Let God, then, who is ever perfect, grow, and grow in thee. For the more thou understandest God, and apprehendest Him, He seems to be growing in thee; but in Himself He grows not, being ever perfect. Thou didst understand a little yesterday; thou understandest more to-day, wilt understand much more to-morrow: the very light of God increases in thee: as if thus God increases, who remains ever perfect. It is as if one’s eyes were being cured of former blindness, and he began to see a little glimmer of light, and the next day he saw more, and the third day still more: to him the light would seem to grow; yet the light is perfect, whether he see it or not. Thus it is also with the inner man: he makes progress indeed in God, and God seems to be increasing in him; yet man himself is decreasing, that he may fall from his own glory, and rise into the glory of God.

6. What we have just heard, appears now distinctly and clearly. “He that cometh from above, is above all.” See what he says of Christ. What of himself? “He that is of the earth, is of earth, and speaketh of the earth. He that cometh from above is above all”—this is Christ; and “he that is of the earth, is of earth, and speaketh of the earth”—this is John. And is this the whole: John is of the earth, and speaks of the earth? Is the whole testimony that he bears of Christ a speaking of the earth? Are they not voices of God that are heard from John, when he bears witness of Christ? Then how does he speak of the earth? He said this of man. So far as relates to man in himself, he is of earth, and speaks of the earth; and when he speaks some divine things, he is enlightened by God. For, were he not enlightened, he would be earth speaking of earth. God’s grace is apart by itself, the nature of man apart by itself. Do but examine the nature of man: man is born and grows, he learns the customs of men. What does he know but earth, of earth? He speaks the things of men, knows the things of men, minds the things of men; carnal, he judges carnally, conjectures carnally: lo! it is man all over. Let the grace of God come, and enlighten his darkness, as it saith, “Thou wilt lighten my candle, O Lord; my God, enlighten my darkness;”319 let it take the mind of man, and turn it to its own light; immediately he begins to say, as the apostle says, “Yet not I, but the grace of God that is with me;”320 and, “Now I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”321 That is to say, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Thus John: as regards John, he is of the earth, and speaks of the earth; whatever that is divine thou hast heard from John, is of Him that enlightens, not of him that receives.

7. “He that cometh from heaven is above all; and what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth: and no man receiveth His testimony.” Cometh from heaven, is above all, our Lord Jesus Christ; of whom it was said above, “No man hath ascended into heaven, but He that came down from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.” And He is above all; “and what 319 Ps. xviii. 28. 320 1 Cor. xv. 10. 321 Gal. ii. 20. He hath seen and heard, that He speaks.” Moreover, He hath a Father, being Himself the Son of God; He hath a Father, and He also hears of the Father. And what is that which He hears of the Father? Who can unfold this? When can my tongue, when can my heart be sufficient, either the heart to understand, or the tongue to utter, what that is which the Son hath heard from the Father? May it be the Son has heard the Word of the Father? Nay, the Son is the Word of the Father. You see how all human effort is here wearied out; you see how all guessing of our heart, all straining of our darkened mind, here fails. I hear the Scripture saying that the Son speaks that which He heareth from the Father; and again, I hear the Scripture saying that the Son is Himself the Word of the Father: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The words that we speak are fleeting and transient: as soon as thy word has sounded from thy mouth, it passeth away; it makes its noise, and passes away into silence. Canst thou follow thy sound, and hold it to make it stand? Thy thought, however, remains, and of that thought that remains thou utterest many words that pass away. What say we, brethren? When God spake, did He give out a voice, or sounds, or syllables? If He did, in what tongue spake He? In Hebrew, or in Greek, or in Latin? Tongues are necessary where there is a distinction of nations. But there none can say that God spake in this tongue, or in that. Observe thy own heart. When thou conceivest a word which thou mayest utter,—For I will say, if I can, what we may note in ourselves, not whereby we may comprehend that,—well, when thou conceivest a word to utter, thou meanest to utter a thing, and the very conception of the thing is already a word in thy heart: it has not yet come forth, but it is already born in the heart, and is waiting to come forth. But thou considerest the person to whom it is to come forth, with whom thou art to speak: if he is a Latin, thou seekest a Latin expression; if a Greek, thou thinkest of Greek words; if a Punic, thou considerest whether thou knowest the Punic language: for the diversity of hearers thou hast recourse to divers tongues to utter the word conceived; but the conception itself was bound by no tongue in particular. Whilst therefore God, when speaking, required not a language, nor took up any kind of speech, how was He heard by the Son, seeing that God’s speaking is the Son Himself? As, in fact, thou hast in thy heart the word that thou speakest, and as it is with thee, and is none other than the spiritual conception itself (for just as thy soul is spirit, so also the word which thou hast conceived is spirit; for it has not yet received sound to be divided by syllables, but remains in the conception of thy heart, and in the mirror of the mind); so God gave out His Word, that is, begat the Son. And thou, indeed, begettest the word even in thy heart according to time; God without time begat the Son by whom He created all times. Whilst, therefore, the Son is the Word of God, and the Son spoke to us not His own word, but the word of the Father, He willed to speak Himself to us when He was speaking the word of the Father. This it is that John said, as was fit and necessary; and we have expounded according to our ability. He whose heart has not yet attained to a proper perception of so great a matter, has whither to turn himself, has where to knock, has from whom to ask, from whom to seek, of whom to receive.

8. “He that cometh from heaven is above all; and what He hath seen and heard, that testifieth He; and His testimony no man receiveth.” If no man, to what purpose came He? He means, no man of a certain class. There are some people prepared for the wrath of God, to be damned with the devil; of these, none receiveth the testimony of Christ. For if none at all, not any man, received, what could these words mean, “But he that received His testimony hath set to his seal that God is true”? Not certainly, then, no man, if thou sayest thyself, “He that received His testimony has set to his seal that God is true.” Perhaps John, on being questioned, would answer and say, I know what I have said, in saying no man. There are, in fact, people born to God’s wrath, and thereunto foreknown. For God knows who they are that will and that will not believe; He knows who they are that shall persevere in that in which they have believed, and who that shall fall away; and all that shall be for eternal life are numbered by God; and He knows already the people set apart. And if He knows this, and has given to the prophets by His Spirit to know it, He gave this also to John. Now John was observing, not with his eye,—for as regards himself he is earth, and speaketh of earth,—but with that grace of the Spirit which he received of God, he saw a certain people, ungodly, unbelieving. Contemplating that people in its unbelief, he says, “His testimony, who came from heaven, no man receiveth.” No man of whom? Of them who shall be on the left hand, of them to whom it shall be said, “Go into the everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” Who are they that do receive it? They who shall be at the right hand, they to whom it shall be said, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which is prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” He observes, then, in the Spirit a dividing, but in the human race a mingling together; and that which is not yet separated locally, he separated in the understanding, in the view of the heart; and he saw two peoples, one of believers, one of unbelievers. Fixing his thought on the unbelievers, he says, “He that cometh from heaven is above all; and what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth and no man receiveth His testimony.” He then turned his thought from the left hand, and looked at the right, and proceeded to say, “He that received His testimony has set to his seal that God is true.” What means “has set to his seal that God is true,” if it be not that man is a liar, and God is true? For no human being can speak any truth, unless he be enlightened by Him who cannot lie. God, then, is true; but Christ is God. Wouldest thou prove this? Receive His testimony and thou findest it. For “he that hath received His testimony has set to his seal that God is true.” Who is true? The same who came from heaven, and is above all, is God, and true. But if thou dost not yet understand Him to be God, thou hast not yet received His testimony: receive it, and thou puttest thy seal to it; confidently thou understandest, definitely thou acknowledgest, that God is true.

9. “For He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.” Himself is the true God, and God sent Him: God sent God. Join both, one God, true God sent by God. Ask concerning them singly, He is God; ask concerning them both, they are God. Not individually God, and both Gods; but each individual God, and both God. For so great is the charity of the Holy Spirit there, so great the peace of unity, that when thou questionest about them individually, the answer to thee is, God; when thou askest concerning the Trinity, thou gettest for answer, God. For if the spirit of man, when it cleaves to God, is one spirit, as the apostle openly declares, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit;”322 how much more is the equal Son, joined to the Father, together with Him one God! Hear another testimony. You know how many believed, when they sold all they had and laid it at the apostles’ feet, that it might be distributed to each according to his need; and what saith the Scripture of that gathering of the saints? “They had one soul and one heart in the Lord.”323 If charity made one soul of so many souls, and one heart of so many hearts, how great must be the charity between the Father and the Son! Surely it must be greater than that between those men who had one heart. If, then, the heart of many brethren was one by charity, if the soul of many brethren was one by charity, wouldst thou say that God the Father and God the Son are two? If they are two Gods, there is not the highest charity between them. For if charity is here so great as to make thy soul and thy friend’s soul one soul, how can it be then that the Father and the Son is not one God? Far be unfeigned faith from this thought. In short, how excellent that charity is, understand hence: the souls of many men are many, and if they love one another, it is one soul; still, in the case of men, they may be called many souls, because the union is not so strong. But there it is right for thee to say one God; two or three Gods it is not right for thee to say. From this, the supreme and surpassing excellency of charity is shown thee to be such, that a greater cannot be.

10. “For He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.” This, of course, he said of Christ, to distinguish himself from Christ. What then? Did not God send John himself? Did he not say himself, “I am sent before Him”? and, “He that sent me to baptize with water”? And is it not of John that it is said, “Behold, I send my messenger before Thee, and he shall prepare Thy way”?324 Does he not himself speak the words of God, he of whom it is said that he is more than a prophet? Then, if God sent him too, and he speaks the words of God, how do we understand him to have distinctly said of Christ, “He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God”? But see what he adds: “For God giveth not the Spirit by meas- 322 1 Cor. vi. 17. 323 Acts iv. 32. 324 Mal. iii. 1. ure.” What is this, “For God giveth not the Spirit by measure”? We find that God does give the Spirit by measure. Hear the apostle when he says, “According to the measure of the gift of Christ.”325 To men He gives by measure, to the only Son He gives not by measure. How does He give to men by measure? “To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of wisdom according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another kinds of tongues; to another the gift of healing. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gift of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?”326 This man has one gift, that man another; and what that man has, this has not: there is a measure, a certain division of gifts. To men, therefore, it is given by measure, and concord among them makes one body. As the hand receives one kind of gift to work, the eye another to see, the ear another to hear, the foot another to walk; nevertheless the soul that does all is one, in the hand to work, in the foot to walk, in the ear to hear, in the eye to see; so are also the gifts of believers diverse, distributed to them as to members, to each according to his proper measure. But Christ, who gives, receives not by measure.

11. Now hear further what follows: because He had said of the Son, “For God giveth not the Spirit by measure: the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand,” He added, “hath given all things into His hands,” that thou mightest know also here with what distinction it is said, “The Father loveth the Son.” And why? Does the Father not love John? And yet He has not given all things into his hand. Does the Father not love Paul? And yet He has not given all things into his hand. “The Father loveth the Son:” but as father loveth, not as master loveth a servant; as the Only Son, not as an adopted son. And so “hath given all things into His hand.” What means “all things”? That the Son should be such as the Father is. To equality with Himself He begat Him in whom it was no robbery to be in the form of God, equal to God. “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand.” Therefore, having deigned to send us the Son, let us not imagine that it is something less than the Father that is sent to us. The Father, in sending the Son, sent His other self.

12. But the disciples, still thinking that the Father is something greater than the Son, seeing only the flesh, and not understanding His divinity, said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us.” As much as to say, “We know Thee already, and bless Thee that we know Thee: for we thank Thee that Thou hast shown Thyself to us. But as yet we know not the Father: therefore our heart is inflamed, and occupied with a certain holy longing of seeing Thy Father who sent Thee. Show us Him, and we shall desire nothing more of Thee: for it sufficeth us when He has been shown, than whom none can be greater.” A good 325 Eph. iv. 7. 326 1 Cor. xii. 8–30. longing, a good desire; but small intelligence. Now the Lord Jesus Himself, regarding them as small men seeking great things, and Himself great among the small, and yet small among the small, says to Philip, one of the disciples, who had said this: “Am I so long time with you, and ye have not known me, Philip?” Here Philip might have answered, Thee we have known, but did we say to Thee, Show us Thyself? We have known Thee, but it is the Father we seek to know. He immediately adds, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father also.”327 If, then, One equal with the Father has been sent, let us not estimate Him from the weakness of the flesh, but think of the majesty clothed in flesh, but not weighed down by the flesh. For, remaining God with the Father, He was made man among men, that, through Him who was made man, thou mightest become such as to receive God. For man could not receive God. Man could see man; God he could not apprehend. Why could he not apprehend God? Because he had not the eye of the heart, by which to apprehend Him. There was something within disordered, something without sound: man had the eyes of the body sound, but the eyes of the heart sick. He was made man to the eye of the body; so that, believing on Him who could be seen in bodily form, thou mightst be healed for seeing Him whom thou wast not able to see spiritually. “Am I so long time with you, and ye know me not, Philip? He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father also.” Why did they not see Him? Lo, they did see Him, and yet saw not the Father: they saw the flesh, but the majesty was concealed. What the disciples who loved Him saw, saw also the Jews who crucified Him. Inwardly, then, was He all; and in such manner inwardly in the flesh, that He remained with the Father when He came to the flesh.

13. Carnal thought does not apprehend what I say: let it defer understanding, and begin by faith; let it hear what follows: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” He has not said, The wrath of God cometh to him; but, “The wrath of God abideth on him.” All that are born mortals have the wrath of God with them. What wrath of God? That wrath which Adam first received. For if the first man sinned, and heard the sentence, “Thou shalt die the death,” he became mortal, and we began to be born mortal; and we have been born with the wrath of God. From this stock came the Son, not having sin, and He was clothed with flesh and mortality. If He partook with us of the wrath of God, are we slow to partake with Him the grace of God? He, then, that will not believe the Son, on the same “the wrath of God abideth.” What wrath of God? That of which the apostle says, “We also were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest.”328 All are therefore children of wrath, because coming of the curse of death. Believe on Christ, for thee made mortal, that thou mayest receive Him, the immortal; and when thou shalt have received His immortality, thou shalt no 327 John xiv. 8, 9. 328 Eph. ii. 3.. longer be mortal. He lived, thou wast dead; He died that thou shouldst live. He has brought us the grace of God, and has taken away the wrath of God. God has conquered death, lest death should conquer man.

1. It is nothing new to your ears, beloved, that the Evangelist John, like an eagle, takes a loftier flight, and soars above the dark mist of earth, to gaze with steadier eyes upon the light of truth. From his Gospel much has already been treated of and discussed through our ministry, with the Lord’s help; and the passage which has been read to-day follows in due order. What I am about to say, with the Lord’s permission, many of you will hear in such wise that you will be reviewing what you know, rather than learning what you know not. Yet, for all that, your attention ought not to be slack, because it is not an acquiring, but a reviewing, of knowledge. This has been read, and we have in our hands to discourse upon this passage—that which the Lord Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. The things spoken there are great mysteries, and the similitudes of great things; feeding the hungry, and refreshing the weary soul.

2. Now when the Lord knew this, “when He had heard that the Pharisees had learned that He was making more disciples than John, and baptized more (though Jesus baptized not, but His disciples), He left Judea, and departed again into Galilee.” We must not discourse of this too long, lest, by dwelling on what is manifest, we shall lack the time to investigate and lay open what is obscure. Certainly, if the Lord saw that the fact of their coming to know that He made more disciples, and baptized more, would so avail to salvation to the Pharisees in following Him, as to become themselves His disciples, and to desire to be baptized by Him; rather would He not have left Judea, but would have remained there for their sakes. But because He knew their knowledge of the fact, and at the same time knew their envy, and that they learned this, not to follow, but to persecute him, He departed thence. He could, indeed, even when present, cause that He should not be taken of them, if He would not; He had it in His power not to be put to death, if He would not, since He had the power not to be born, if He would not. But because, in everything that He did as man, He was showing an example to them who were to believe on Him (that any one servant of God sinneth not if he retire into another place, when he sees, it may be, the rage of his persecutors, or of them that seek to bring his soul into evil; but if a servant of God did this he might appear to commit sin, had not the Lord led the way in doing it), that good Master did this to teach us, not because He feared it.

3. It may perhaps surprise you why it is said, that “Jesus baptized more than John;” and after this was said, it is subjoined, “although Jesus baptized not, but His disciples.” What then? Was the statement made false, and then corrected by this addition? Or, are both true, viz. that Jesus both did and also did not baptize? He did in fact baptize, because it was He that cleansed; and He did not baptize, because it was not He that touched. The disciples supplied the ministry of the body; He afforded the aid of His majesty. Now, when could He cease from baptizing, so long as He ceased not from cleansing? Of Him it is said by the same John, in the person of the Baptist, who saith, “This is He that baptizeth.” Jesus, therefore, is still baptizing; and so long as we continue to be baptized, Jesus baptizeth. Let a man come without fear to the minister below; for he has a Master above.

4. But it may be one saith, Christ does indeed baptize, but in spirit, not in body. As if, indeed, it were by the gift of another than He that any is imbued even with the sacrament of corporal and visible baptism. Wouldest thou know that it is He that baptizeth, not only with the Spirit, but also with water? Hear the apostle: “Even as Christ,” saith he, “loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, purifying it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.”329 Purifying it. How? “With the washing of water by the Word.” What is the baptism of Christ? The washing of water by the Word. Take away the water, it is no baptism; take away the Word, it is no baptism.

5. This much, then, on the preliminary circumstances, by occasion of which He came to a conversation with that woman, let us look at the matters that remain; matters full of mysteries and pregnant with sacraments. “And He must needs pass through Samaria. He cometh then to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s fountain was there.” It was a well; but every well is a fountain, yet not every fountain a well. For where the water flows from the earth, and offers itself for use to them that draw it, it is called a fountain; but if accessible, and on the surface, it is called only a fountain: if, however, it be deep and far down, it is called a well, but in such wise as not to lose the name of fountain.

6. “Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well. It was about the sixth hour.” Now begin the mysteries. For it is not without a purpose that Jesus is weary; not indeed without a purpose that the strength of God is weary; not without a purpose that He is weary, by whom the wearied are refreshed; not without a purpose is He weary, by whose absence we are wearied, by whose presence we are strengthened. Nevertheless Jesus is weary, and weary with His journey; and He sits down, and that, too, near a well; and it is at the sixth hour that, being wearied, He sits down. All these things hint something, are intended to intimate something, they make us eager, and encourage us to knock. May Himself open to us and to you; He who has deigned to exhort us, so as to say, “Knock, and it shall be opened to you.” It was for thee that Jesus was wearied with His journey. We find Jesus to be strength, and we find Jesus to be weak: we find a strong and a weak Jesus: strong, because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: the same was in the beginning with God.” Wouldest thou see how this Son of God is strong? “All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made:” and without labor, 329 Eph. v. 25–27. too, were they made. Then what can be stronger than He, by whom all things were made without labor? Wouldest thou know Him weak? “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The strength of Christ created thee, the weakness of Christ created thee anew. The strength of Christ caused that to be which was not: the weakness of Christ caused that what was should not perish. He fashioned us by His strength, He sought us by His weakness.

7. As weak, then, He nourishes the weak, as a hen her chickens; for He likened Him self to a hen: “How often,” He saith to Jerusalem, “would I have gathered thy children under my wings, as a hen her chickens; but thou wouldest not!”330 And you see, brethren, how a hen becomes weak with her chickens. No other bird, when it is a mother, is recognized at once to be so. We see all kinds of sparrows building their nests before our eyes; we see swallows, storks, doves, every day building their nests; but we do not know them to be parents, except when we see them on their nests. But the hen is so enfeebled over her brood, that even if the chickens are not following her, if thou see not the young ones, yet thou knowest her at once to be a mother. With her wings drooping, her feathers ruffled, her note hoarse, in all her limbs she becomes so sunken and abject, that, as I have said, even though thou seest not her young, yet thou perceivest her to be a mother. In such manner was Jesus weak, wearied with His journey. His journey is the flesh assumed for us. For how can He, who is present everywhere, have a journey, He who is nowhere absent? Whither does He go, or whence, but that He could not come to us, except He had assumed the form of visible flesh? Therefore, as He deigned to come to us in such manner, that He appeared in the form of a servant by the flesh assumed, that same assumption of flesh is His journey. Thus, “wearied with His journey,” what else is it but wearied in the flesh? Jesus was weak in the flesh: but do not thou become weak; but in His weakness be strong, because what is “the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

8. Under this image of things, Adam, who was the figure of Him that was to be, afforded us a great indication of this mystery; rather, God afforded it in him. For he was deemed worthy to receive a wife while he slept, and that wife was made for him of his own rib: since from Christ, sleeping on the cross, was the Church to come,—from His side, namely, as He slept; for it was from His side, pierced with the spear, as He hung on the cross, that the sacraments of the Church flowed forth. But why have I chosen to say this, brethren? Because it is the weakness of Christ that makes us strong. A remarkable figure of this went before in the case of Adam. God could have taken flesh from the man to make of it a woman, and it seems that this might have been the more suitable. For it was the weaker sex that was being made, and weakness ought to have been made of flesh rather than of bone; for the bones are the stronger parts in the flesh. He took not flesh to make of it a woman; but took a bone, and of the bone was the woman shaped, and flesh was filled in into the place of the bone. 330 Matt. xxiii. 37. He could have restored bone for bone; He could have taken, not a rib, but flesh, for the making of the woman. What, then, did this signify? Woman was made, as it were, strong, from the rib; Adam was made, as it were, weak, from the flesh. It is Christ and the Church; His weakness is our strength.

9. But why at the sixth hour? Because at the sixth age of the world. In the Gospel, count up as an hour each, the first age from Adam to Noah; the second, from Noah to Abraham; the third, from Abraham to David; the fourth, from David to the removing to Babylon; the fifth, from the removing to Babylon to the baptism of John: thence is the sixth being enacted. Why dost thou marvel? Jesus came, and, by humbling Himself, came to a well. He came wearied, because He carried weak flesh. At the sixth hour, because in the sixth age of the world. To a well, because to the depth of this our habitation. For which reason it is said in the psalm: “From the depth have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.”331 He sat, as I said, because He was humbled.

10. “And there came a woman.” Figure of the Church not yet justified, but now about to be justified: for this is the subject of the discourse. She comes ignorant, she finds Him, and there is a dealing with her. Let us see what, and wherefore. “There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water.” The Samaritans did not belong to the nation of the Jews: they were foreigners, though they inhabited neighboring lands. It would take a long time to relate the origin of the Samaritans; that we may not be detained by long discourse of this, and leave necessary matters unsaid, suffice to say, then, that we regard the Samaritans as aliens. And, lest you should think that I have said this with more boldness than truth, hear the Lord Jesus Himself, what He said of that Samaritan, one of the ten lepers whom He had cleansed, who alone returned to give thanks: “Were there not ten cleansed? And where are the nine? There was not another to give glory to God, save this stranger.”332 It is pertinent to the image of the reality, that this woman, who bore the type of the Church, comes of strangers: for the Church was to come of the Gentiles, an alien from the race of the Jews. In that woman, then, let us hear ourselves, and in her acknowledge ourselves, and in her give thanks to God for ourselves. For she was the figure, not the reality; for she both first showed forth the figure and became the reality. For she believed on Him who, of her, set the figure before us. “She cometh, then, to draw water.” Had simply come to draw water, as people are wont to do, be they men or women.

11. “Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. For His disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat. Then saith the Samaritan woman unto Him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a Samaritan woman? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” You see that they were aliens: indeed, the Jews would not use their vessels. 331 Ps. cxxx. 1. 332 Luke xvii. 17. And as the woman brought with her a vessel with which to draw the water, it made her wonder that a Jew sought drink of her,—a thing which the Jews were not accustomed to do. But He who was asking drink was thirsting for the faith of the woman herself.

12. At length, hear who it is that asketh drink: “Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest, it may be, have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.” He asks to drink, and promises to give drink. He longs as one about to receive; He abounds as one about to satisfy. “If thou knewest,” saith He, “the gift of God.” The gift of God is the Holy Spirit. But as yet He speaks to the woman guardedly, and enters into her heart by degrees. It may be He is now teaching her. For what can be sweeter and kinder than that exhortation? “If thou knewest the gift of God,” etc.: thus far He keeps her in suspense. That is commonly called living water which issues from a spring: that which is collected from rain in pools and cisterns is not called living water. And it may have flowed from a spring; yet if it should stand collected in some place, not admitting to it that from which it flowed, but, with the course interrupted, separated, as it were, from the channel of the fountain, it is not called “living water:” but that is called living water which is taken as it flows. Such water there was in that fountain. Why, then, did He promise to give that which He was asking?

13. The woman, however, being in suspense, saith to Him, “Lord, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.” See how she understood the living water, simply the water which was in that fountain. “Thou wouldst give me living water, and I carry that with which to draw, and thou dost not. The living water is here; how art thou to give it me?” Understanding another thing, and taking it carnally, she does in a manner knock, that the Master may open up that which is closed. She was knocking in ignorance, not with earnest purpose; she is still an object of pity, not yet of instruction.

14. The Lord speaks somewhat more clearly of that living water. Now the woman had said, “Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, his children, and his cattle?” Thou canst not give me of the living water of this well, because thou hast nothing to draw with: perhaps thou promisest another fountain? Canst thou be better than our father, who dug this well, and used it himself, and his? Let the Lord, then, declare what He called living water. “Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but he that drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall not thirst forever; but the water which I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water, springing up into everlasting life.” The Lord has spoken more openly: “It shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into everlasting life. He that drinketh of this water shall not thirst forever.” What more evident than that it was not visible, but invisible water, that He was promising? What more evident than that He was speaking, not in a carnal, but in a spiritual sense?

1. The Gospel Lesson of to-day follows that of yesterday, and this is the subject of our discourse. In this passage the meaning, indeed, is not difficult of investigation, but worthy of preaching, worthy of admiration and praise. Accordingly, in reciting this passage of the Gospel, we must commend it to your attention, rather than laboriously expound it. Now Jesus, after His stay of two days in Samaria, “departed into Galilee,” where He was brought up. And the evangelist, as he goes on, says, “For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.” It was not because He had no honor in Samaria that Jesus departed thence after two days; for Samaria was not His own country, but Galilee. Whilst, therefore, He left Samaria so quickly, and came to Galilee, where He had been brought up, how does He testify that “a prophet hath no honor in his own country”? Rather does it seem that He might have testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country, had He disdained to go into Galilee, and had stayed in Samaria.

2. Now mark well, beloved, while the Lord suggests and bestows what I may speak, that here is intimated to us no slight mystery. You know the question before us; seek ye out the solution of it. But, to make the solution desirable, let us repeat the theme. The point that troubles us is, why the evangelist said, “For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.” Urged by this, we go back to the preceding words, to discover the evangelist’s intention in saying this; and we find him relating, in the preceding words of the narrative, that after two days Jesus departed from Samaria into Galilee. Was it for this, then, thou saidst, O evangelist, that Jesus testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country, just because He left Samaria after two days, and made haste to come to Galilee? On the contrary, I should have thought it more likely, that if Jesus had no honor in His own country, He should not have hastened to it, and left Samaria. But if I am not mistaken, or rather, because it is true, and I am not mistaken; for the evangelist saw what he was saying better than I can see it, saw the truth better than I do, he who drank it in from the Lord’s bosom: for the evangelist is the same John who, among all the disciples, reclined on the Lord’s breast, and whom the Lord, owing love to all, yet loved above the rest. Is it he, then, that should be mistaken, and I right in my opinion? Rather, if I am piously-minded, let me obediently hear what he said, that I may be worthy of thinking as he thought.

3. Hear then, dearly beloved, what I think in this matter, without prejudice to your own judgment, if you have formed a better. For we have all one Master, and we are fellow-disciples in one school. This, then, is my opinion, and see whether my opinion is not true, or near the truth. In Samaria He spent two days, and the Samaritans believed on Him; many were the days He spent in Galilee, and yet the Galileans did not believe on Him. Look back to the passage, or recall in memory the lesson and the discourse of yesterday. He came into Samaria, where at first He had been preached by that woman with whom He had spoken great mysteries at Jacob’s well. After they had seen and heard Him, the Samaritans believed on Him because of the woman’s word, and believed more firmly because of His own word, even many more believed: thus it is written. After passing two days there (in which number of days is mystically indicated the number of the two precepts on which hang the whole law and the prophets, as you remember we intimated to you yesterday), He goes into Galilee, and comes to the city Cana of Galilee, where He made the water wine. And there, when He turned the water into wine, as John himself writes, His disciples believed on Him; but, of course, the house was full with a crowd of guests. So great a miracle was wrought, and yet only His disciples believed on Him. He has now returned to this city of Galilee. “And, behold, a certain ruler, whose son was sick, came to Him, and began to beseech Him to go down” to that city or house, “and heal his son; for he was at the point of death.” Did he who besought not believe? What dost thou expect to hear from me? Ask the Lord what He thought of him. Having been besought, this is what He answered: “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye believe not.” He shows us a man lukewarm, or cold in faith, or of no faith at all; but eager to try by the healing of his son what manner of person Christ was, who He was, what He could do. The words of the suppliant, indeed, we have heard: we have not seen the heart of the doubter; but He who both heard the words and saw the heart has told us this. In short, the evangelist himself, by the testimony of his narrative, shows us that the man who desired the Lord to come to his house to heal his son, had not yet believed. For after he had been informed that his son was whole, and found that he had been made whole at that hour in which the Lord had said, “Go thy way, thy son liveth;” then he saith, “And himself believed, and all his house.” Now, if the reason why he believed, and all his house, was that he was told that his son was whole, and found the hour they told him agreed with the hour of Christ’s foretelling it, it follows that when he was making the request he did not yet believe. The Samaritans had waited for no sign, they believed simply His word; but His own fellow-citizens deserved to hear this said to them, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye believe not;” and even there, notwithstanding so great a miracle was wrought, there did not believe but “himself and his house.” At His discourse alone many of the Samaritans believed; at that miracle, in the place where it was wrought, only that house believed. What is it, then, brethren, that the Lord doth show us here? Galilee of Judea was then the Lord’s own country, because He was brought up in it. But now that the circumstance portends something,—for it is not without cause that “prodigies” are so called, but because they portend or presage something: for the word “prodigy” is so termed as if it were porrodicium, quod porro dicat, what betokens something to come, and portends something future,—now all those circumstances portended something, predicted something; let us just now assume the country of our Lord Jesus Christ after the flesh (for He had no country on earth, except after the flesh which He took on earth); let us, I say, assume the Lord’s own country to mean the people of the Jews. Lo, in His own country He hath no honor. Observe at this moment the multitudes of the Jews; observe that nation now scattered over the whole world, and plucked up by the roots; observe the broken branches, cut off, scattered, withered, which being broken off, the wild olive has deserved to be grafted in; look at the multitude of the Jews: what do they say to us even now? “He whom you worship and adore was our brother.” And we reply, “A prophet hath no honor in his own country.” In short, those Jews saw the Lord as He walked on the earth and worked miracles; they saw Him giving sight to the blind, opening the ears of the deaf, loosing the tongues of the dumb, bracing up the limbs of the paralytics, walking on the sea, commanding the winds and waves, raising the dead: they saw Him working such great signs, and after all that scarcely a few believed. I am speaking to God’s people; so many of us have believed, what signs have we seen? It is thus, therefore, that what occurred at that time betokened what is now going on. The Jews were, or rather are, like the Galileans; we, like those Samaritans. We have heard the gospel, have given it our consent, have believed on Christ through the gospel; we have seen no signs, none do we demand.

4. For, though one of the chosen and holy twelve, yet he was an Israelite, of the Lord’s nation, that Thomas who desired to put his fingers into the places of the wounds. The Lord censured him just as He did this ruler. To the ruler He said, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye believe not;” and to Thomas He said, “Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed.” He had come to the Galileans after the Samaritans, who had believed His word, before whom He wrought no miracles, whom He without anxiety quickly left, strong in faith, because by the presence of His divinity He had not left them. Now, then, when the Lord said to Thomas, “Come, reach hither thy hand, and be not faithless, but believing;” and he, having touched the places of the wounds, exclaimed, and said, “My Lord, and my God;” he is chided, and has it said to him, “Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed.” Why, but “because a prophet has no honor in his own country?” But since this Prophet has honor among strangers, what follows? “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”351 We are the persons here foretold; and that which the Lord by anticipation praised, He has deigned to fulfill even in us. They saw Him, who crucified Him, and touched Him with their hands, and thus a few believed; we have not seen nor handled Him, we have heard and believed. May it be our lot, that the blessedness which He has promised may be made good in us: both here, because we have been preferred to His own country; and in the world to come, because we have been grafted in instead of the branches that were broken off!

1. It ought not to be a matter of wonder that a miracle was wrought by God; the wonder would be if man had wrought it. Rather ought we to rejoice than wonder that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was made man, than that He performed divine works among men. It is of greater importance to our salvation what He was made for men, than what He did among men: it is more important that He healed the faults of souls, than that He healed the weaknesses of mortal bodies. But as the soul knew not Him by whom it was to be healed, and had eyes in the flesh whereby to see corporeal deeds, but had not yet sound eyes in the heart with which to recognise Him as God concealed in the flesh, He wrought what the soul was able to see, in order to heal that by which it was not able to see.

He entered a place where lay a great multitude of sick folk—of blind, lame, withered; and being the physician both of souls and bodies, and having come to heal all the souls of them that should believe, of those sick folk He chose one for healing, thereby to signify unity. If in doing this we regard Him with a commonplace mind, with the mere human understanding and wit, as regards power it was not a great matter that He performed; and also as regards goodness He performed too little. There lay so many there, and yet only one was healed, whilst He could by a word have raised them all up. What, then, must we understand but that the power and the goodness was doing what souls might, by His deeds, understand for their everlasting salvation, than what bodies might gain for temporal health? For that which is the real health of bodies, and which is looked for from the Lord, will be at the end, in the resurrection of the dead. What shall live then shall no more die; what shall be healed shall no more be sick; what shall be satisfied shall no more hunger and thirst; what shall be made new shall not grow old. But at this time, however, the eyes of the blind, that were opened by those acts of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, were again closed in death; and limbs of the paralytics that received strength were loosened again in death; and whatever was for a time made whole in mortal limbs came to nought in the end: but the soul that believed passed to eternal life. Accordingly, to the soul that should believe, whose sins He had come to forgive, to the healing of whose ailments He had humbled Himself, He gave a significant proof by the healing of this impotent man. Of the profound mystery of this thing and this proof, so far as the Lord deigns to grant us, while you are attentive and aiding our weakness by prayer, I will speak as I shall have ability. And whatever I am not able to do, that will be supplied to you by Him by whose help I do what I can.

2. Of this pool, which was surrounded with five porches, in which lay a great multitude of sick folk, I remember that I have very often treated; and most of you will with me recollect what I am about to say, rather than gain the knowledge of it for the first time. But it is by no means unprofitable to go back upon matters already known, that both they who know not may be instructed, and they who do know may be confirmed. Therefore, as being already known, these things must be touched upon briefly, not leisurely inculcated. That pool and that water seem to me to have signified the Jewish people. For that peoples are signified under the name of waters the Apocalypse of John clearly indicates to us, where, after he had been shown many waters, and he had asked what they were, was answered that they were peoples.355 That water, then—namely, that people—was shut in by the five books of Moses, as by five porches. But those books brought forth the sick, not healed them. For the law convicted, not acquitted sinners. Accordingly the letter, without grace, made men guilty, whom on confessing grace delivered. For this is what the apostle saith: “For if a law had been given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” Why, then, was the law given? He goes on to say, “But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”356 What more evident? Have not these words expounded to us both the five porches, and also the multitude of sick folk? The five porches are the law. Why did not the five porches heal the sick folk? Because, “if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily right- eousness should have been by the law.” Why, then, did the porches contain those whom they did not heal? Because “the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”

3. What was done, then, that they who could not be healed in the porches might be healed in that water after being troubled? For on a sudden the water was seen troubled, and that by which it was troubled was not seen. Thou mayest believe that this was wont to be done by angelic virtue, yet not without some mystery being implied. After the water was troubled, the one who was able cast himself in, and he alone was healed: whoever went in after that one, did so in vain. What, then, is meant by this, unless it be that there came one, even Christ, to the Jewish people; and by doing great things, by teaching profitable things, troubled sinners, troubled the water by His presence, and roused it towards His own death? But He was hidden that troubled. For had they known Him, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.357 Wherefore, to go down into the troubled water means to believe in the Lord’s death. There only one was healed, signifying unity: whoever came thereafter was not healed, because whoever shall be outside unity cannot be healed.

4. Now let us see what He intended to signify in the case of that one whom He Himself, keeping the mystery of unity, as I said before, deigned to heal out of so many sick folk. He found in the number of this man’s years the number, so to speak, of infirmity: “He was thirty and eight years in infirmity.” How this number refers more to weakness than to health must 355 Rev. xvii. 15. 356 Gal. iii. 21, 22. 357 1 Cor. ii. 8. be somewhat more carefully expounded. I wish you to be attentive; the Lord will aid us, so that I may fitly speak, and that you may sufficiently hear. The number forty is commended to our attention as one consecrated by a kind of perfection. This, I suppose, is well known to you, beloved. The Holy Scriptures very often testify to the fact. Fasting was consecrated by this number, as you are well aware. For Moses fasted forty days, and Elias as many; and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did Himself fulfill this number of fasting. By Moses is signified the law; by Elias, the prophets; by the Lord, the gospel. It was for this reason that these three appeared on that mountain, where He showed Himself to His disciples in the brightness of His countenance and vesture. For He appeared in the middle, between Moses and Elias, as the gospel had witness from the law and the prophets.358 Whether, therefore, in the law, or in the prophets, or in the gospel, the number forty is commended to our attention in the case of fasting. Now fasting, in its large and general sense, is to abstain from the iniquities and unlawful pleasures of the world, which is perfect fasting: “That, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we may live temperately, and righteously, and godly in this present world.” What reward does the apostle join to this fast? He goes on to say: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the appearing of the glory of the blessed God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”359 In this world, then, we celebrate, as it were, the forty days’ abstinence, when we live aright, and abstain from iniquities and from unlawful pleasures. But because this abstinence shall not be without reward, we look for “that blessed hope, and the revelation of the glory of the great God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” In that hope, when the reality of the hope shall have come to pass, we shall receive our wages, a penny (denarius). For the same is the wages given to the workers laboring in the vineyard,360 as I presume you remember; for we are not to repeat everything, as if to persons wholly ignorant and inexperienced. A denarius, then, which takes its name from the number ten, is given, and this joined with the forty makes up fifty; whence it is that before Easter we keep the Quadragesima with labor, but after Easter we keep the Quinquagesima with joy, as having received our wages. Now to this, as if to the wholesome labor of a good work, which belongs to the number forty, there is added the denarius of rest and happiness, that it may be made the number fifty.

5. The Lord Jesus Himself showed this also far more openly, when He companied on earth with His disciples during forty days after His resurrection; and having on the fortieth day ascended into heaven, did at the end of ten days send the wages, the Holy Ghost. These were done in signs, and by a kind of signs were the very realities anticipated. By significant tokens are we fed, that we may be able to come to the enduring realities. We are workmen, 358 Rom. iii. 21. 359 Tit. ii. 12, 13. 360 Matt. xx. 10. and are still laboring in the vineyard: when the day is ended and the work finished, the wages will be paid. But what workman can hold out to the receiving of the wages, unless he be fed while he labors? Even thou thyself wilt not give thy workman only wages; wilt thou not also bestow on him that where with he may repair his strength in his labor? Surely thou feedest him to whom thou art to give wages. In like manner also doth the Lord, in those significant tokens of the Scriptures, feed us while we labor. For if that joy in understanding holy mysteries be withdrawn from us, we faint in labor, and there will be none to come to the reward.

6. How, then, is work perfected in the number forty? The reason, it may be, is, because the law was given in ten precepts, and was to be preached throughout the whole world: which whole world, we are to mark, is made up of four quarters, east and west, south and north, whence the number ten, multiplied by four, comes to forty. Or, it may be, because the law is fulfilled by the gospel, which has four books: for in the gospel it is said, “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” Whether, then, it be for this reason or for that, or for some other more probable, which is hid from us, but not from more learned men; certain it is, however, that in the number forty a certain perfection in good works is signified, which good works are most of all practised by a kind of abstinence from unlawful lusts of the world, that is, by fasting in the general sense.

Hear also the apostle when he says, “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”361 Whence the love? By the grace of God, by the Holy Spirit. For we could not have it from ourselves, as if making it for ourselves. It is the gift of God, and a great gift it is: for, saith he, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given to us.”362 Wherefore love completes the law, and most truly it is said, “Love is the perfecting of the law.” Let us inquire as to this love, in what manner the Lord doth commend it to our consideration. Remember what I laid down: I want to explain the number thirty-eight of the years of that impotent man, why that number thirty-eight is one of weakness rather than of health. Now, as I was saying, love fulfills the law. The number forty belongs to the perfecting of the law in all works; but in love two precepts are committed to our keeping. Keep before your eyes, I beseech you, and fix in your memory, what I say; be ye not despisers of the word, that your soul may not become a trodden path, where the seed cast cannot sprout, “and the fowls of the air will come and gather it up.” Apprehend it, and lay it up in your hearts. The precepts of love, given to us by the Lord, are two: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;” and, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”363 With good reason did the widow cast “two mites,” all her substance, into the offerings of God: with 361 Rom. x. 10. 362 Rom. v. 5. 363 Matt. xxii. 37–40. good reason did the host take “two” pieces of money, for the poor man that was wounded by the robbers, for his making whole: with good reason did Jesus spent two days with the Samaritans, to establish them in love. Thus, whilst a certain good thing is generally signified by this number two, most especially is love in its twofold character set forth to us thereby. If, therefore, the number forty possesses the perfecting of the law, and the law is fulfilled only in the twin precepts of love, why dost thou wonder that he was weak and sick, who was short of forty by two?

7. Therefore let us now see the sacred mystery whereby this impotent man is healed by the Lord. The Lord Himself came, the Teacher of love, full of love, “shortening,” as it was predicted of Him, “the word upon the earth,”364 and showed that the law and the prophets hang on two precepts of love. Upon these hung Moses with his number forty, upon these Elias with his; and the Lord brought in this number in His testimony. This impotent man is healed by the Lord in person; but before healing him, what does He say to him? “Wilt thou be made whole?” The man answered that he had not a man to put him into the pool. Truly he had need of a “man” to his healing, but that “man” one who is also God. “For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”365 He came, then, the Man who was needed: why should the healing be delayed? “Arise,” saith He; “take up thy bed, and walk.” He said three things: “Arise, Take up thy bed, and Walk.” But that “Arise” was not a command to do a work, but the operation of healing. And the man, on being made whole, received two commands: “Take up thy bed, and Walk.” I ask you, why was it not enough to say, “Walk?” Or, at any rate, why was it not enough to say, “Arise”? For when the man had arisen whole, he would not have remained in the place. Would it not be for the purpose of going away that he would have arisen? My impression is, that He who found the man lacking two things, gave him these two precepts: for, by ordering him to do two things, it is as if He filled up that which was lacking.

8. How, then, do we find the two precepts of love indicated in these two commands of the Lord? “Take up thy bed,” saith He, “and walk.” What the two precepts are, my brethren, recollect with me. For they ought to be thoroughly familiar to you, and not merely to come into your mind when they are recited by us, but they ought never to be blotted out from your hearts. Let it ever be your supreme thought, that you must love God and your neighbor: “God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” These must always be pondered, meditated, retained, practised, and fulfilled. The love of God comes first in the order of enjoying; but in the order of doing, the love of our neighbor comes first. For He who commanded thee this love in two precepts did not charge thee to love thy neighbor first, and then God, but first God, afterwards thy neighbor. Thou 364 Isa. x. 23; xxviii. 22. 365 1 Tim. ii. 5. however, as thou dost not yet see God dost earn to see Him by loving thy neighbor; by loving thy neighbor thou purgest thine eye for seeing God, as John evidently says, “If thou lovest not thy brother whom thou seest, how canst thou love God, whom thou dost not see?”366 See, thou art told, “Love God.” If thou say to me, “Show me Him, that I may love Him;” what shall I answer, but what the same John saith: “No man hath seen God at any time”? And, that you may not suppose yourself to be wholly estranged from seeing God, he saith, “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.”367 Therefore love thy neighbor; look at the source of thy love of thy neighbor; there thou wilt see, as thou mayest, God. Begin, then, to love thy neighbor. “Break thy bread to the hungry, and bring into thy house him that is needy without shelter; if thou seest the naked, clothe him; and despise not those of the household of thy seed.” And in doing this, what wilt thou get in consequence? “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning light.” 368 Thy light is thy God, a “morning light” to thee, because He shall come to thee after the night of this world: for He neither rises nor sets, because He is ever abiding. He will be a morning light to thee on thy return, He who had set for thee on thy falling away from Him. Therefore, in this “Take up thy bed,” He seems to me to have said, Love thy neighbor.

9. But why the love of our neighbor is set forth by the taking up of the bed, is still shut up, and, as I suppose, needs to be expounded: unless, perhaps, it offend us that our neighbor should be indicated by means of a bed, a stolid, senseless thing. Let not my neighbor be angry if he be set forth to us by a thing without soul and without feeling. The Lord Himself, even our Saviour Jesus Christ, is called the corner-stone, to build up two in Himself. He is called also a rock, from which water flowed forth: “And that rock was Christ.”369 What wonder, then, if Christ is called rock, that neighbor is called wood? Yet not any kind of wood whatever; as neither that was any kind of rock soever, but one from which water flowed to the thirsty; nor any kind soever of stone, but a corner-stone, which in itself coupled two walls coming from different directions. So neither mayest thou take thy neighbor to be wood of any kind soever, but a bed. Then what is there in a bed, pray? What, but that the impotent man was borne on it; but, when made whole, he carries the bed? What does the apostle say? “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so shall ye fulfill the law of Christ.”370 Now the law of Christ is love, and love is not fulfilled except we bear one another’s burdens. “Forbearing,” saith he, “one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”371 When thou wast weak thy neighbor bore thee: thou art made whole, bear thy 366 1 John iv. 20. 367 1 John iv. 16. 368 Isa. lviii. 7, 8. 369 1 Cor. x. 4. 370 Gal. vi. 2. 371 Eph. iv. 2. neighbor. So wilt thou fill up, O man, that which was lacking to thee. “Take up thy bed, then.” But when thou hast taken it up, stay not in the place; “walk.” By loving thy neighbor, by caring for thy neighbor, dost thou perform thy going. Whither goest thy way, but to the Lord God, whom we ought to love with the whole heart, and with the whole soul, and with the whole mind? For we are not yet come to the Lord, but we have our neighbor with us. Bear him, then, when thou walkest, that thou mayest come to Him with whom thou desirest to abide. Therefore, “take up thy bed, and walk.”

10. The man did this, and the Jews were offended. For they saw a man carrying his bed on the Sabbath-day, and they did not blame the Lord for healing him on the Sabbath, that He should be able to answer them, that if any of them had a beast fallen into a well, he would surely draw it out on the Sabbath-day, and save his beast; and so, now they did not object to Him that a man was made whole on the Sabbath-day, but that the man was carrying his bed. But if the healing was not to be deferred, should a work also have been commanded? “It is not lawful for thee,” say they, to do what thou art doing, “to take up thy bed.” And he, in defence, put the author of his healing before his censors, saying, “He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.” Should I not take injunction from him from whom I received healing? And they said, “Who is the man that said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?”

11. “But he that was made whole knew not who it was” that had said this to him. “For Jesus,” when He had done this, and given him this order, “turned away from him in the crowd.” See how this also is fulfilled. We bear our neighbor, and walk towards God; but Him, to whom we are walking, we do not yet see: for that reason also, that man did not yet know Jesus. The mystery herein intimated to us is, that we believe on Him whom we do not yet see; and that He may not be seen, He turns aside in the crowd. It is difficult in a crowd to see Christ: a certain solitude is necessary for our mind; it is by a certain solitude of contemplation that God is seen. A crowd has noise; this seeing requires secrecy. “Take up thy bed”—being thyself borne, bear thy neighbor; “and walk,” that thou mayest come to the goal. Do not seek Christ in a crowd: He is not as one of a crowd; He excels all crowd. That great fish first ascended from the sea, and He sits in heaven making intercession for us: as the great high priest He entered alone into that within the veil; the crowd stands without. Do thou walk, bearing thy neighbor: if thou hast learned to bear, thou, who wast wont to be borne. In a word, even now as yet thou knowest not Jesus, not yet seest Jesus: what follows thereafter? Since that man desisted not from taking up his bed and walking, “Jesus seeth him afterwards in the temple.” He did not see Jesus in the crowd, he saw Him in the temple. The Lord Jesus, indeed, saw him both in the crowd and in the temple; but the impotent man does not know Jesus in the crowd, but he knows Him in the temple. The man came then to the Lord: saw Him in the temple, saw Him in a consecrated, saw Him in a holy place. And what does the Lord say to him? “Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest some worse thing befall thee.”

12. The man, then, after he saw Jesus, and knew Him to be the author of his healing, was not slothful in preaching Him whom he had seen: “He departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus that had made him whole.” He brought them word, and they were mad against him; he preached his own salvation, they sought not their own salvation.

13. The Jews persecuted the Lord Jesus because He did these things on the Sabbath-day. Let us hear what answer the Lord now made to the Jews. I have told you how He is wont to answer concerning the healing of men on the Sabbath-day, that they used not on the Sabbathday to slight their cattle, either in delivering or in feeding them. What does He answer concerning the carrying of the bed? A manifest corporal work was done before the eyes of the Jews; not a healing of the body, but a bodily work, which appeared not so necessary as the healing. Let the Lord, then, openly declare that the sacrament of the Sabbath, even the sign of keeping one day, was given to the Jews for a time, but that the fulfillment of the sacrament had come in Himself. “My Father,” saith He, “worketh hitherto, and I work.” He sent a great commotion among them: the water is troubled by the coming of the Lord, but yet He that troubles is not seen. Yet one great sick one is to be healed by the troubled water, the whole world by the death of the Lord.

14. Let us see, then, the answer made by the Truth: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Is it false, then, which the Scripture has said, that “God rested from all His works on the seventh day”? And does the Lord Jesus speak contrary to this Scripture ministered by Moses, whilst He Himself says to the Jews, “If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for He wrote of me”? See, then, whether Moses did not mean it to be significant of something that “God rested on the seventh day.” For God had not become wearied in doing the work of His own creation, and needed rest as a man. How can He have been wearied, who made by a word? Yet is both that true, that “God rested from His works on the seventh day;” and this also is true that Jesus saith, “My Father worketh hitherto.” But who can unfold it in words, man to men, weak to weak, unlearned to them that seek to learn; and if he chance to understand somewhat, unable to bring it forth and unfold it to men, who with difficulty, it may be, receive it, even if what is received can possibly be unfolded? Who, I say, my brethren, can unfold in words how God both works while at rest, and rests while working? I pray you to put this matter off while you are advancing on the way; for this seeing requires the temple of God, requires the holy place. Bear your neighbor, and walk. Ye shall see Him in that place where ye shall not require the words of men.

15. Perhaps we can more appropriately say this, that in the saying, “God rested on the seventh day,” he signified by a great mystery the Lord and our Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, who spoke and said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” For the Lord Jesus is, of course, God. For He is the Word of God, and you have heard that “in the begin ning was the Word;” and not any word whatsoever, but “the Word was God, and all things were made by Him.” He was perhaps signified as about to rest on the seventh day from all His works. For, read the Gospel, and see what great works Jesus wrought. He wrought our salvation on the cross, that all things foretold by the prophets might be fulfilled in Him. He was crowned with thorns; He hung on the tree; said, “I thirst,” received vinegar on a sponge, that it might be fulfilled which was said, “And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” 372 And when all His works were completed, on the sixth day of the week, He bowed His head and gave up the ghost, and on the Sabbath-day He rested in the tomb from all His works. Therefore it is as if He said to the Jews, “Why do ye expect that I should not work on the Sabbath? The Sabbath-day was ordained for you for a sign of me. You observe the works of God: I was there when they were made, by me were they all made; I know them. ‘My Father worketh hitherto.’ The Father made the light, but He spoke that there should be light; if He spoke, it was by His Word He made it: His Word I was, I am; by me was the world made in those works, by me the world is ruled in these works. My Father worked when He made the world, and hitherto now worketh while He rules the world: therefore by me He made when He made, and by me He rules while He rules.” This He said, but to whom? To men deaf, blind, lame, impotent, not acknowledging the physician, and as if in a frenzy they had lost their wits, wishing to slay Him.

16. Further, what said the evangelist as he went on? “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father;” not in any ordinary manner, but how? “Making Himself equal with God.” For we all say to God, “Our Father which art in heaven;” we read also that the Jews said, “Seeing Thou art our Father.”373 Therefore it was not for this they were angry, because He said that God was His Father, but because He said it in quite another way than men do. Behold, the Jews understand what the Arians do not understand. The Arians, in fact, say that the Son is not equal with the Father, and hence it is that the heresy was driven from the Church. Lo, the very blind, the very slayers of Christ, still understood the words of Christ. They did not understand Him to be Christ, nor did they understand Him to be the Son of God: but they did nevertheless understand that in these words such a Son of God was intimated to them as should be equal with God. Who He was they knew not; still they did acknowledge such a One to be declared, in that “He said God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.” Was He not therefore equal with God? He did not make Himself equal, but the Father begat Him equal. Were He to make Himself equal, He would fall by robbery. For he who wished to make himself equal with God, whilst he was not so, fell, and of an angel became a devil,374 372 Ps. lxix. 22. 373 Isa. lxiii. 16. 374 Isa. xiv. 14. and administered to man that cup of pride by which himself was cast down. For this fallen said to man, envying his standing, “Taste, and ye shall be as gods;”375 that is, seize to yourselves by usurpation that which ye are not made, for I also have been cast down by robbery. He did not put forth this, but this is what he persuaded to. Christ, however, was begotten equal to the Father, not made; begotten of the substance of the Father. Whence the apostle thus declares Him: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” What means “thought it not robbery”? He usurped not equality with God, but was in that equality in which He was begotten. And how were we to come to the equal God? “He emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant.”376 But He emptied Himself not by losing what He was, but by taking to Him what He was not. The Jews, despising this form of a servant, could not understand the Lord Christ equal to the Father, although they had not the least doubt that He affirmed this of Himself, and therefore were they enraged: and yet He still bore with them, and sought the healing of them, while they raged against Him.

1. John the evangelist, among his fellows and companions the other evangelists, received this special and peculiar gift from the Lord (on whose breast he reclined at the feast, hereby to signify that he was drinking deeper secrets from His inmost heart), to utter those things concerning the Son of God which may perhaps rouse the attentive minds of the little ones, but cannot fill them, as yet not capable of receiving them; while to minds, of somewhat larger growth, and coming to a certain age of inner manhood, he gives in these words something whereby they may both be exercised and fed. You have heard it when it was read, and you remember how this discourse arose. For yesterday it was read, that “therefore the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.” This that displeased the Jews, pleased the Father. This, without doubt, pleases them too that honor the Son as they honor the Father; for if it does not please them, they will not be pleasing. For God will not be greater because it pleases thee, but thou wilt be less if it displeases thee. Now against this calumny of theirs, coming either of ignorance or of malice, the Lord speaks not at all what they can understand, but that whereby they may be agitated and troubled, and, on being troubled, it may be, seek the Physician. And He uttered what should be written, that it might afterwards be read even by us. Now we have seen what happened in the hearts of the Jews when they heard these words; what happens in ourselves when we hear them, let us more fully consider. For heresies, and certain tenets of perversity, ensnaring souls and hurling them into the deep, have not sprung up except when good Scriptures are not rightly understood, and when that in them which is not rightly understood is rashly and boldly asserted. And so, dearly beloved, ought we very cautiously to hear those things for the understanding of which we are but little ones, and that, too, with pious heart and with trembling, as it is written, holding this rule of soundness, that we rejoice as in food in that which we have been able to understand, according to the faith with which we are imbued; and what we have not yet been able to understand, that we lay aside doubting, and defer the understanding of it for a time; that is, even if we do not yet know what it is, that still we doubt not in the least that it is good and true. And as for me, brethren, you must consider who I am that undertake to speak to you, and what I have undertaken: for I have taken upon me to treat of things divine, being a man; of spiritual things, being carnal; of things eternal, being a mortal. Also from me, dearly beloved, far be vain presumption, if my conversation would be sound in the house of God, “which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” 377 In proportion 377 1 Tim. iii. 1. to my measure I take what I put before you: where it is opened, I see with you; where it is shut, I knock with you.

2. Now the Jews were moved and indignant: justly, indeed, because a man dared to make himself equal with God; but unjustly in this, because in the man they understood not the God. They saw the flesh, the God they knew not; they observed the habitation, of the inhabitant they were ignorant. That flesh was a temple, within it dwelt God. It was not the flesh that Jesus made equal to the Father, it was not the form of a servant that He compared to the Lord; not that which He became for us, but that which He was when He made us. For who Christ is (I speak to Catholics) you know, because you have rightly believed; not Word only, nor flesh only, but the Word was made flesh to dwell among us. I recite again concerning the Word what you know: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God:” here is equality with the Father. But “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Than this flesh the Father is greater. Thus the Father is both equal and greater; equal to the Word, greater than the flesh; equal to Him by whom He made us, greater than He who was made for us. By this sound catholic rule, which you ought particularly to know, which you who know it hold fast, from which your faith ought not in any case to slip, which is to be wrested from your heart by no arguments of men, let us measure the things we do understand; and the things which, it may be, we do not understand, let us defer, to be hereafter measured by this rule, when we shall be competent to do this. We know Him, then, as equal to the Father, the Son of God, because we know Him in the beginning as God the Word. Why, then, sought the Jews to slay Him? “Because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God:” seeing the flesh, not seeing the Word. Let Him therefore speak against them, the Word through the flesh; let Him, the dweller within, speak for through His dwelling-place, that whoso can, shall know who He is that dwells within.

3. What saith He then to them? “Then answered Jesus, and said unto them,” being indignant because He made Himself equal with God, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing.” What the Jews answered to these words is not written: and perhaps they said nothing. Certain, however, who wish to be esteemed Christians, are not silent, but from these words somehow conceive certain opinions in contradiction to us, which are not to be despised, both for their and for our sakes. The Arian heretics, namely, while they assert that the Son, who took upon Himself flesh, is less than the Father, not by the flesh, but before taking flesh, and not of the same substance as the Father, take a handle of misrepresentation from these words, and reply to us: “You see that the Lord Jesus, observing the Jews to be moved with indignation at his making himself equal to God the Father, subjoined such words as these, to show that he was not equal with God. For the Jews,” say they, “were provoked against Christ, because he made him self equal with God; and Christ, wishing to cure them of this impression, and to show them that the Son is not equal to the Father, that is, to God, saith this, as if he said, Why are ye angry? Why are ye indignant? I am not equal to God, since ‘the Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he seeth the Father doing.’ Now,” say they, “he who ‘cannot do anything of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing,’ is surely less, not equal.”

4. In this distorted and depraved rule of his own heart, let the heretic hear us, not as yet chiding, but still as it were inquiring, and let him explain to us what he thinks. For, I suppose, whoever thou art (for we may regard him as here present in person), thou dost hold with us, that “in the beginning was the Word.” I do hold it, saith he. And that “the Word was with God”? This too, saith he, I hold. Proceed then, and hold the stronger saying that follows, that “the Word was God.” Even this, says he, I hold: but yet, this, God the greater; that, God the less. Now this somehow smells of the pagan: I thought I was speaking with a Christian. If there is God the greater, and God the less, then we worship two Gods, not one God. Why, saith he; dost not thou, too, affirm two Gods, equal the one to the other? This I do not assert: for I understand this equality as implying therein also undivided love; and if undivided love, then perfect unity. For if the love that God put in men doth make of many hearts of men one heart, and doth make many souls of men into one soul, as it is written of them that believed and mutually loved one another, in the Acts of the Apostles, “They had one soul and one heart toward God:”378 if, therefore, my soul and thy soul become one soul, when we think the same thing and love one another, how much more must God the Father and God the Son be one God in the fountain of love!

5. But to these words, by which thy heart is disturbed, bend thy thought, and reflect with me on that which we were seeking out concerning the Word. We already hold that “the Word was God:” I join to this another thing, that, having said, “This was in the beginning with God,” the evangelist immediately subjoined, “All things were made by Him.” Now will I urge thee by questioning, now will I move thee against thyself, and sue thee against thyself: only keep this in memory concerning the Word, that “the Word was God, and all things were made by Him.” Hear now the words by which thou wast moved to assert that the Son is less, forsooth, because He said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” Just so, saith he. Explain to me this a little: This is, I presume, how thou thinkest: that the Father doeth certain things, and the Son observes how the Father doeth, that He may also Himself be able to do those things which He seeth the Father doing. Thou hast set up two artisans, as it were: the Father and the Son just like master and learner, like as artisan fathers are wont to teach their sons their craft. Behold, I come down to thy carnal sense: for the moment I think as thou doest: let us see if this our conception finds an issue in harmony with the things which we have just now alike spoken and alike hold regarding the Word, that “the Word was God,” and that “all things were made by Him.” Suppose, 378 Acts iv. 32. then, the Father, as an artisan, doing certain works, and the Son as a learner, who “cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing:” He keenly watches, in a manner, the Father’s hands, that, as He seeth Him fashioning aught, so He may Himself in like manner fashion something similar by His own works. But the Father here doeth all those things that He doeth, and wishes the Son to give heed to Him, and to do the like also Himself; by whom doeth the Father? Come! now is the time for thee to stand to thy former opinion, which thou didst recite with me, and didst hold with me; that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made by Him.” But thou, after holding with me, that all things were made by the Word, dost again, with thy carnal wit and childish fancy, imagine with thyself God making something, and the Word giving heed; so that when God has made, the Word also may make the like. Now, what does God make without the Word? For if He doeth aught, then were not all things made by the Word; thou hast given up the position which thou didst hold. But if all things were made by the Word, correct what thou didst understand amiss. The Father made, and made only by the Word: in what way does the Word give heed to see the Father making without the Word, what the Word may do in like manner? Whatever the Father hath made, He made it by the Word; else is it false that “all things were made by Him.” But it is true that “all things were made by Him.” Perhaps this did not seem enough for thee? Well, “and without Him was nothing made.”

6. Withdraw, then, from this wisdom of the flesh, and let us inquire in what manner it is said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” Let us inquire, if we are worthy to apprehend. For I confess it is a great thing, and altogether difficult; to see the Father doing through the Son: not the Father and the Son doing each His particular works, but the Father doing every work whatsoever by the Son; so that not any works are done by the Father without the Son, or by the Son without the Father, because “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” These truths being most firmly established in the foundation of faith, what now is the nature of this “seeing”? Thou seekest, as I suppose, to know the Son doing: seek first to know the Son seeing. For what, in fact, saith He? “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” Note what He said, “but what He seeth the Father doing.” The seeing comes first, the doing follows: He seeth in order to do. As for thee, why seekest thou at present to know how He doeth, whilst thou understandest not as yet how He seeth? Why runnest thou to that which comes later, leaving that which comes first? He declares Himself as seeing and doing, not doing and seeing; because “He cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” Wilt thou that I explain to thee how He doeth? Do thou explain to me how He seeth. If thou canst not explain this, neither can I that. If thou art not yet competent to understand this, neither am I to understand that. Wherefore let each of us seek, each knock, that each may merit to receive. Why dost thou, as if thou wert learned, unjustly blame me who am unlearned? I in respect of the doing, thou in respect of the seeing, being both unlearned, let us inquire of the Master, not childishly wrangle in His school. We have already, however, learned together that “all things were made by Him.” Therefore it is manifest that it is not a different kind of works that the Father doeth, that, seeing them, the Son may do other works like them; but the very same doeth the Father by the Son, because all things were made by the Word. Now, as to how God doeth, who knows? How made He, I will not say the world, but thine own eye, in thy carnal attachment to which thou comparest visible things with invisible? For thou conceivest of God such things as thou art wont to see with these eyes. But if God might be seen with these eyes, He would not have said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Accordingly, thou hast an eye of the body to see an artificer, but thou hast not yet the eye of the heart to see God: hence, what thou art wont to see in an artificer, thou wouldest transfer to God. Leave earthly things on the earth; set thy heart on high.

7. What then, beloved, are we going to explain that which we have asked, how the Word seeth, how the Father is seen by the Word, what the seeing of the Word is? I am not so bold, so rash, as to promise to explain this, for myself or for you: however I estimate your measure, still I know my own. Therefore, if you please, not to delay it longer, let us run over the passage, and see how carnal hearts are troubled by the words of the Lord; to this end troubled, that they may not continue in that which they hold. Let this be wrested from them, as some toy is wrested from children, with which they amuse themselves to their hurt, that, as persons of larger growth, they may have more profitable things planted in them, and may be able to make progress, instead of crawling on the earth. Arise, seek, sigh, pant with desire, and knock at what is shut. But if we do not yet desire, not yet earnestly seek, not yet sigh, we shall only be throwing pearls to all indiscriminately, or finding pearls ourselves, regardless of what kind. Wherefore, beloved, I would move a longing desire in your heart. Good character leads to right understanding: the kind of life leads to another kind of life. One kind of life is earthly, another is heavenly: there is a life of beasts, another of men, and another of angels. The life of beasts is excited with earthly pleasures, seeks earthly pleasures alone, and grovels after them with immoderate desire: the life of angels is alone heavenly; the life of men is midway between that of angels and of beasts. If man lives after the flesh, he is on a level with the beasts; if he lives after the Spirit, he joins in the fellowship of angels. When thou livest after the Spirit, examine even in the angelic life whether thou be small or well-grown. For if thou art still a little one, the angels say to thee, “Grow: we feed on bread; thou art nourished with milk, with the milk of faith that thou mayest come to the meat of sight.” But if there be still a longing for filthy pleasures, if the thoughts be still of deceit, if lies are not avoided, if perjuries be heaped on lies, shall a heart so foul dare to say, “Explain to me how the Word sees;” even if I be able to do so, even if I myself now see? And further, though not perhaps of this character myself, and I am nevertheless far from this vision, how must that man be weighed down with earthly desires, who is not yet rapt with this desire from above! There is a wide difference between loathing and desiring; and again, between desiring and enjoying. If thou livest as do the beasts, thou loathest: the angels have full enjoyment. If, on the other hand, thou livest not as the beast, thou hast no longer loathing: something thou desirest, and dost not receive: thou hast, by the very desire, begun the life of the angels. May it grow in thee, and be perfected in thee; and mayest thou receive this, not of me, but of Him who made both me and thee!

8. Yet the Lord also has not left us to chance, since, in that He said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing,” He meant us to understand that the Father doeth, not some works which the Son may see, and the Son doeth other works after He has seen the Father doing; but that both the Father and Son do the very same works. For He goes on to say, “For what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son in like manner.” Not after the Father hath done works, doeth the Son other works in like manner; but, “whatever He doeth, these also the Son doeth in like manner.” If these the Son doeth which the Father doeth, then it is by the Son that the Father doeth: if by the Son the Father doeth what He doeth, then the Father doeth not some, the Son others; but the works of the Father and of the Son are the same works. And how doeth the Son also the same? Both “the same,” and “in like manner.” In case you should think them the same, but in a different manner, the “same,” saith He, and “in like manner.” And how could they be the same and not in like manner? Take an example, which I presume is not too big for you: when we write letters they are first formed by our heart, then by our hand. Certainly: why otherwise have you all agreed, but because you perceived it to be so? It is as I have said, it is manifest to us all. The letters are made first by our heart, then by our body; the hand serves, the heart commands; both the heart and the hand make the same letters. Dost think the heart doeth some letters, the hand some others? The same indeed doeth the hand, but not in like manner: our heart forms them intelligibly, but our hand visibly. See how the same things are made, but not in like manner. Hence it was not enough for the Lord to say, “What things soever the Father doeth, these also the Son doeth;” He must add, “and in like manner.” For what if thou shouldst understand this just as thou understandest whatever thy heart doeth, this also thy hand doeth, but in a different manner? Here, however, he added, “These also the Son doeth in like manner.” If He both doeth these, and in like manner doeth, then awake; let the Jew be crushed, let the Christian believe, let the heretic be convinced: The Son is equal to the Father.

9. “For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth.” Here is that “showeth.” “Showeth,” as it were, to whom? Of course, as to one that sees. We return to that which we cannot explain, how the Word seeth. Behold, man was made by the Word; but man has eyes, ears, hands, divers members in the body: he is able by the eyes to see, by the ears to hear, by the hands to work; the members are diverse, their offices diverse. One member cannot do the office of another; yet, by reason of the unity of the body, the eye sees both for itself and for the ear, and the ear hears for itself and for the eye. Are we to suppose that something like this holds good in the Word, seeing all things are by Him; and Scripture has said in the psalm, “Understand, ye brutish among the people; and ye fools, at length be wise. He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? And He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” 379 Hence, if the Word is He that formed the eye, for all things are by the Word; if the Word is He that planted the ear, for all things are by the Word: we cannot say the Word doth not hear, the Word doth not see; lest the psalm reprove us, and say, “Fools, at length be wise.” Therefore, if the Word heareth and seeth, if the Son heareth and seeth, are we yet to search for eyes and ears in Him in separate places? Does He by one part hear, by another see; and cannot His ear do what His eye doth; and cannot His eye do what His ear can? Or is He not all sight, all hearing? Perhaps yes; nay, not perhaps, but truly yes; whilst, however, that seeing of His, and that hearing of His, is in a way far other than it is with us. Both to see and to hear exist together in the Word: seeing and hearing are not diverse things in Him; but hearing is sight, and sight is hearing.

10. And we, who see in one way, and hear in another way, how know we this? We return perhaps to ourselves, if we are not the trangressors to whom it is said, “Return, O trangressors, to your heart.”380 Return to your heart: why go from yourselves, and perish from yourselves? Why go the ways of solitude? You go astray by wandering: return ye. Whither? To the Lord. ’Tis quickly done: first return to thine own heart; thou hast wandered abroad an exile from thyself; thou knowest not thyself, and yet thou art asking by whom thou wast made! Return, return to thy heart, lift thyself away from the body: thy body is thy place of abode; thy heart perceives even by thy body. But thy body is not what thy heart is; leave even thy body, return to thy heart. In thy body thou didst find eyes in one place, ears in another place: dost thou find this in thy heart? Or hast thou not ears in thy heart? Else of what did the Lord say, “Whoso hath ears to hear, let him hear?”381 Or hast thou not eyes in thy heart? Else of what saith the apostle, “The eyes of your heart being enlightened?”382 Return to thy heart; see there what, it may be, thou canst perceive of God, for in it is the image of God. In the inner man dwelleth Christ, in the inner man art thou renewed after the image of God, in His own image recognize its Author. See how all the senses of the body bring intelligence to the heart within of what they have perceived abroad; see how many ministers the one commander within has and what it can do by itself even without these ministers. The eyes report to the heart things black and white; the ears report to the same heart pleasant and harsh sounds; 379 Ps. xciv. 8, 9. 380 Isa. xlvi. 8. 381 Luke viii. 8. 382 Eph. i. 18. to the same heart the nostrils announce sweet odors and stenches; to the same heart the taste announces things bitter and sweet; to the same heart the touch announces things smooth and rough; and the heart declares to itself things just and unjust. Thy heart sees and hears and judges all other things perceived by the senses; and, what the senses do not aspire to, discerns things just and unjust, things evil and good. Show me the eyes, ears, nostrils, of thy heart. Diverse are the things that are referred to thy heart, yet are there not diverse members there. In thy flesh, thou hearest in one place, seest in another; in thy heart, where thou seest, there thou hearest. If this be the image, how much more mightily He whose the image is! Therefore the Son both heareth and seeth; the Son is both the hearing itself and the seeing: to hear is to Him the same thing as “to be;” and to see is to Him the same thing as “to be.” To see is not the same thing to thee as to be; for if thou lose thy sight, thou canst be; and if thou lose thy hearing, thou canst be.

11. Do we think we have knocked? Is there raised up within us something whereby we may even slightly conjecture whence light may come to us? It is my opinion, brethren, that when we speak of these things, and meditate upon them, we are exercising ourselves. And when we are exercising ourselves, and are as it were bent back again by our own weight to our customary thoughts, we are like weak-eyed persons, when they are brought forth to see the light, if perchance they had no sight at all before, and begin in some sort to recover their sight by the assiduous care of physicians. And when the physician would test the progress of recovery, he tries to show them something which they sought to see, but could not while they were blind: and while the eyesight is now somewhat recovered, they are brought forth to the light; and as they see it, are beaten back in a manner by the very glare; and they answer the physician, as he points out the object, This moment I did see, but now I cannot. What then does the physician? He brings them back to their usual ways, and applies the eye-salve to nourish the longing for seeing that which was seen only for a moment, so that by the very longing he may cure more completely; and if any stinging salves are applied for the recovery of sound ness, let the patient bear it bravely, and, inflamed with love of the light, say to himself, When will it be that with strong eyes I shall see what with sore and weak eyes I could not? He urges the physician, and begs him to heal him. Therefore, brethren, if, it may be, something like this has taken place in your hearts, if somehow you have raised your heart to see the Word, and, beaten back by its light, you have fallen back to your wonted ways; pray the Physician to apply sharp salves, the precepts of righteousness. There is that which thou mayest see, but not that whereby thou canst see. Thou didst not believe me before that there is that which thou mayest see: thou art now, as by the guidance of reason, brought to it: thou hast drawn near, strained thine eyes to see it, throbbed, and shrunk back. Thou knowest for certain that there is what thou mayest see, but that thou art not yet meet to see it. Therefore be healed. What are the eye-salves? Do not lie, do not swear falsely, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not defraud. But thou art used to these, and it is with some pain thou art drawn away from old habits: this is what bites, but yet heals. For I tell thee freely, by fear of myself and of thee, if thou give up the healing, and scorn to become meet to enjoy this light, by weakness of thine eyes, thou wilt love darkness; and by loving darkness, wilt remain in darkness; and by remaining in darkness, wilt be cast even into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. If the love of light has effected nothing in thee, let the fear of pain effect something.

12. I think I have spoken long enough, and yet I have not concluded the Gospel lesson: if I go on to declare what remains, I shall burden you, and I fear lest even what has been drawn may be lost; therefore let this be enough for you now, beloved. We are debtors, not now, but always as long as we live; because we live for you. However, do you, by good living, comfort this life of ours, so weak, toilsome, and full of peril in this world; do not afflict and wear us out by your evil manners. For if, when offended with your evil life, we flee from you and separate ourselves from you, and no longer come to you, will ye not complain, and say, And if we were sick, ye might care for us; and if we were weak, ye might have visited us? Behold, we do care for you; behold, we do visit you; but let it not be with us as you have heard from the apostle, “I fear lest I have bestowed labor upon you in vain.”383

In the former discourse, so far as the subject impressed us, and so far as our poverty of understanding attained to, we have spoken by occasion of the words of the Gospel, where it is written: “The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing,”— what it is for the Son—that is, the Word, for the Son is the Word—“to see;” and as all things were made by the Word, how it is to be understood that the Son first sees the Father doing, and then only Himself also doeth the things which He has seen done, seeing that the Father has done nothing except by the Son. For “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made. We have not, however, delivered to you anything as fully explained, and that because we have not understood anything thus clearly set forth. For, indeed, speech sometimes fails even where the understanding makes way; how much more doth speech suffer defect, where the understanding has nothing perfect! Now, therefore, as the Lord gives us, let us briefly run over the passage, and even to-day complete the due task. Should there perchance remain somewhat of time or of strength, we will reconsider (so far as it may be practicable for us and with you) what it is for the Word “to see” and “to be shown to;” since, in fact, all that is here spoken is such that, if understood according to man’s sense, carnally, the soul full of vain fancies makes for us only certain images of the Father and the Son, just as of two men, the one showing, the other seeing; the one speaking, the other hearing,—all which are idols of the heart. And if now at length idols have been cast down from their own temples, how much more ought they to be cast down from Christian hearts!

2. “The Son,” saith He, “cannot do anything of Himself, but what He sees the Father doing.” This is true: hold this fast, while at the same time ye do not let slip what ye have gotten in the beginning of the Gospel, that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and especially that “all things were made by Him.” Join this that ye have now heard to that hearing, and let both agree together in your hearts. Thus, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, except what He seeth the Father doing,” is yet in such wise that what the Father doeth, He doeth only by the Son, because the Son is His Word: and, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;” also, “All things were made by Him.” For what things soever He doeth, the Son also doeth in like manner; not other things, but these and not in a different, but in like manner.

3. “For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth.” To that which He said above, “except what He seeth the Father doing,” seems to belong this also, “He showeth Him all things that Himself doeth.” But if the Father doth show what He doeth, and the Son cannot do except the Father hath shown, and if the Father cannot show unless He hath done, it will follow that it is not through the Son that the Father doeth all things; moreover, if we hold it fixed and unshaken, that the Father doeth all by the Son, then He shows the Son before He doeth. For if the Father doth show to the Son after He has done, that the Son may do the things shown, which being shown were already done, then doubtless something there is that the Father doeth without the Son. But the Father doeth not anything without the Son, because the Son of God is God’s Word, and all things were made by Him. It remains, then, that possibly what the Father is about to do, He shows as about to be done, that it may be done by the Son. For if the Son doeth those things which the Father showeth as already done, surely it is not by the Son that the Father hath done the things which He thus showeth. For they could not be shown to the Son unless they were first done, and the Son would not be able to do them unless they were first shown; therefore were they made without the Son. But yet it is a true thing, “All things were made by Him;” therefore they were shown before they were made. But this we said must be put off, and returned to after briefly scanning the passage, if, as we said, some portion of time and of strength should remain to us for a reconsideration of the matters deferred.

4. Attend now to a wider and more difficult question. “And greater works than these,” saith He, “will He show Him, that ye may marvel.” “Greater than these.” Greater than which? The answer readily occurs: than the cures of bodily diseases which ye have just heard: For the whole occasion of this discourse arose about the man who was thirty and eight years in infirmity, and was healed by the word of Christ; and in respect of this cure, the Lord could say, “Greater works than these He will show Him, that ye may marvel.” For there are greater, and the Father will show them to the Son. It is not “hath shown,” as of a thing past, but “will show,” of a thing future; or, is about to show. Again a difficult question arises: Why, then, is there something with the Father that has not yet been shown to the Son? Is there something with the Father that was still hid from the Son when He spoke these words? For surely, if it be “will show,” that is to say, “is about to show,” then He has not yet shown; and He is about to show to the Son at the same time as to these persons, since it follows, “that ye may marvel.” And this is a thing hard to see, how the Eternal Father doth show something, as it were in time, to the coeternal Son, who knoweth all things that are with the Father.

5. But what are the greater works? For perhaps this is easy to understand. “For as the Father,” saith He, “raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.” To raise the dead, then, are greater works than to heal the sick. But “as the Father raiseth the dead, and quickeneth them, so also the Son quickeneth whom He will.” Hence, the Father some, the Son others? But all things are by Him: therefore the Son the same persons as the Father doth; since the Son doeth not other things and in a different manner, but “these” and in “like manner.” Thus clearly it must be understood, and thus held. But keep in memory that “the Son quickeneth whom He will.” Here, too, know not only the power of the Son, but also the will. Both the Son quickeneth whom He will, and also the Father quickeneth whom He will—the Son the same persons as the Father; and hence the power of the Father and of the Son is the same, and also the will is the same. What follows then? “For the Father judgeth not any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son, that all men may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father:” this He subjoined, as rendering a reason of the foregoing sentence. A great question comes before us; give it your earnest attention. The Son quickeneth whom He will, the Father quickeneth whom He will; the Son raiseth the dead, just as the Father raiseth the dead. And further, “the Father judgeth not any man.” If the dead must be raised in the judgment, how can it be said that the Father raiseth the dead, if He judgeth not any man, since “He hath given all judgment to the Son”? But in that judgment the dead are raised; some rise to life, others to punishment. If the Son doeth all this, but the Father not, inasmuch as “He judgeth not any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son,” it will appear contrary to what has been said, viz., “As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, so also the Son quickeneth whom He will.” Consequently the Father and the Son raise together; if they raise together, they quicken together: hence they judge together. How, then, is that true, “For the Father judgeth not any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son”? Meanwhile let the questions now proposed engage your minds; the Lord will cause that, when solved, they will delight you. For so it is, brethren: every question, unless it stirs the mind to reflection, will not give delight when explained. May the Lord Himself then follow with us, in case He may perhaps reveal Himself somewhat in those matters which He foldeth up. For He foldeth up His light with a cloud; and it is difficult to fly like an eagle above every obscure mist with which the whole earth is covered, and to behold the most serene light in the words of the Lord. In case, then, He may perhaps dissipate our darkness with the heat of His rays, and deign to reveal Himself somewhat in the sequel, let us, deferring these questions, look at what follows.

6. “Whoso honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father that sent Him.” This is a truth, and is plain. Since, then, “all judgment hath He given to the Son,” as He said above, “that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father,” what if there be those who honor the Father and honor not the Son? It cannot be, saith He: “Whoso honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father that sent Him.” One cannot therefore say, I honored the Father, because I knew not the Son. If thou didst not yet honor the Son, neither didst thou honor the Father. For what is honoring the Father, unless it be in that He hath a Son? It is one thing when thou art taught to honor God in that He is God; but another thing when thou art taught to honor Him in that He is Father. When thou art taught to honor Him in that He is God, it is as the Creator, as the Almighty, as the Spirit supreme, eternal, invisible, unchangeable, that thou art led to think of Him; but when thou art taught to honor Him in that He is Father, it is the same thing as to honor the Son; because Father cannot be said if there be not a Son, as neither can Son if there be not a Father. But lest, it may be, thou honorest the Father indeed as greater, but the Son as less,—as thou mayest say to me, “I do honor the Father, for I know that He has a Son; nor do I err in the name Father, for I do not understand Father without Son, and yet the Son also I honor as the less,”—the Son Himself sets thee right, and recalls thee, saying, “that all may honor the Son,” not in a lower degree, but “as they honor the Father.” Therefore, “whoso honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father that sent Him.” “I,” sayest thou, “wish to give greater honor to the Father, less to the Son.” Therein thou takest away honor from the Father, wherein thou givest less to the Son. For, being thus minded, it must really seem to thee that the Father either would not or could not beget a Son equal to Himself: if He would not, He lacked the will; if He could not, He lacked the ability. Dost thou not therefore see that, being thus minded, wherein thou wouldst give greater honor to the Father, therein thou art reproachful to the Father? Wherefore, so honor the Son as thou honorest the Father, if thou wouldest honor both the Father and the Son.

7. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whoso heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but is passed,” not is passing now, but is already passed, “from death into life.” And mark this, “Whoso heareth my word, and”—He says not, believeth me, but—“believeth Him that sent me.” Let him hear the word of the Son, that he may believe the Father. Why heareth Thy word, and yet believeth another? When we hear any one’s word, is it not him that utters the word we believe? is it not to him who speaks we lend our faith? What, then, did He mean, saying, “Whoso heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent me,” if it be not this, because “His word is in me”? And what is “heareth my word,” but “heareth me”? So, too, “believeth Him that sent me,” because, believing Him, he believeth His word; but again, believing His word, he believeth me, because I am the Word of the Father. There is therefore peace in the Scriptures, and all things duly disposed, and in no way clashing. Cast away, then, contention from thy heart; understand the harmony of the Scriptures. Dost thou think that the Truth should speak things contrary to itself?

8. “Whoso heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death unto life.” You remember what we laid down above, that “as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, so also the Son quickeneth whom He will.” He is beginning already to reveal Himself; and behold, even now, the dead are rising. For “whoso heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and will not come into judgment.” Prove that he has risen again. “But is passed,” saith He “from death unto life.” He that is passed from death unto life, has surely without any doubt risen again. For he could not pass from death to life, unless he were first in death and not in life; but when he will have passed, he will be in life, and not in death. He was therefore dead, and is alive again; he was lost, but is found.384 Hence a resurrection 384 Luke xv. 32. does take place now, and men pass from a death to a life; from the death of infidelity to the life of faith; from the death of falsehood to the life of truth; from the death of iniquity to the life of righteousness. There is, therefore, that which is a resurrection of the dead.

9. May He open the same more fully, and dawn upon us as He begins to do! “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is.” We did look for a resurrection of the dead in the end, for so we have believed; yea, not we looked, but are manifestly bound to look for it: for it is not a false thing we believe, when we believe that the dead will rise in the end. When the Lord Jesus, then, was willing to make known to us a resurrection of the dead before the resurrection of the dead, it is not as that of Lazarus,385 or of the widow’s son,386 or of the ruler of the synagogue’s daughter,387 who were raised to die again (for in their case there was a resurrection of the dead before the resurrection of the dead); but, as He says here, “hath,” says He, “eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death into life.” To what life? To life eternal. Not, then, as the body of Lazarus: for he indeed passed from the death of the tomb to the life of men, but not to life eternal, seeing he was to die again; whereas the dead, that are to rise again at the end of the world, will pass to eternal life. When our Lord Jesus Christ, then, our heavenly Master, the Word of the Father, and the Truth, was willing to represent to us a resurrection of the dead to eternal life before the resurrection of the dead to eternal life, “The hour cometh,” saith He. Doubtless thou, imbued with a faith of the resurrection of the flesh, didst look for the hour of the end of the world, which, that thou shouldst not look for here, He added, “and now is.” Therefore He saith not this, “The hour cometh,” of that last hour, when “at the command and the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet Christ in the air: and so shall we be ever with the Lord.”388 That hour will come, but is not now. But consider what this hour is: “The hour cometh, and now is.” What happens in that hour? What, but a resurrection of the dead? And what kind of resurrection? Such that they who rise live for ever. This will be also in the last hour.

10. What then? How do we understand these two resurrections? Do we, it may be, understand that they who rise now will not rise then; that the resurrection of some is now, of some others then? It is not so. For we have risen in this resurrection, if we have rightly believed; and we ourselves, who have already risen, are looking for another resurrection in the end. Moreover, both now are we risen to eternal life, if we perseveringly continue in the 385 John xi. 43. 386 Luke vi. 14. 387 Matt. v. 41. 388 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16. same faith; and then, too, we shall rise to eternal life, when we shall be made equal with the angels.389 But let Himself distinguish and open up what we have made bold to speak; how there happens to be a resurrection before a resurrection, not of different but of the same persons; nor like that of Lazarus, but into eternal life. He will open it clearly. Hear ye the Master, while dawning upon us, and as our Sun gliding in upon our hearts; not such as the eyes of flesh desire to look upon, but on whom the eyes of the heart fervently long to be opened. To Him, then, let us give ear: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead”—you see that a resurrection is asserted—“shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.” Why hath He added, “they that hear shall live”? Why, could they hear unless they lived? It would have been enough, then, to say, “The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.” We should immediately understand them to be living, since they could not hear unless they lived. No, saith He, not because they live they hear; but by hearing they come to life again: “Shall hear, and they that hear shall live.” What, then, is “shall hear,” but “shall obey”? For, as to the hearing of the ear, not all who hear shall live. Many, indeed, hear and do not believe; by hearing and not believing, they obey not; by not obeying, they live not. And so here, they that “shall hear” are they that “shall obey.” They that obey, then, shall live: let them be sure and certain of it, shall live. Christ, the Word of God, is preached to us; the Son of God, by whom all things were made, who, for the dispensation’s sake, surely took flesh, was born of a virgin, was an infant in the flesh, a young man in the flesh, suffering in the flesh, dying in the flesh, rising again in the flesh, ascending in the flesh, promising a resurrection to the flesh, promising a resurrection to the mind—to the mind before the flesh, to the flesh after the mind. Whoso heareth and obeyeth, shall live; whoso heareth and obeyeth not, that is, heareth and despiseth, heareth and believeth not, shall not live. Why shall not live? Because he heareth not. What is “heareth not”? Obeyeth not. Thus, then, “they that hear shall live.”

11. Turn your thoughts now to what we said had to be deferred, that it may now, if possible, be opened. Concerning this very resurrection He immediately subjoined, “For as the Father hath life in Himself, even so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” What means that, “The Father hath life in Himself”? Not elsewhere hath He life but in Himself. His living, in fact, is in Him, not from elsewhere, nor derived from another. He does not, as it were, borrow life, nor, as it were, become a partaker of life, of a life which is not what Himself is: but “hath life in Himself,” so that the very life is to Him His very self. If I should be able yet further in some small measure to speak from this matter, by proposing examples for informing your understanding, will depend on God’s help and the piety of your attention. God lives, and the soul also lives; but the life of God is unchangeable, the life of the soul is changeable. In God is neither increase nor decrease; but He is the same 389 Luke xx. 36. always in Himself, is ever as He is: not in one way now, in another way hereafter, in some other way before. But the life of the soul is exceedingly various: it lived foolish, it lives wise; it lived unrighteous, it lives righteous; now remembers, now forgets; now learns, now cannot learn; now loses what it had learned, now apprehends what it had lost. The life of the soul is changeable. And when the soul lives in unrighteousness, that is its death; when again it becomes righteous, it becomes partaker of another life, which is not what itself is, inasmuch as by rising up to God, and cleaving to God, of Him it is justified. For it is said, “To him that believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”390 By forsaking God, it becomes unrighteous; by coming to Him, it is made righteous. Does it not seem to thee as it were something cold, which, when brought near the fire, grows warm; when removed from the fire, grows cold? A something dark, which, brought near the light, grows bright; when removed from the light, grows dark? Something such is the soul: God is not any such thing. Moreover, man may say that he has light now in his eyes. Let thine eyes say then, if they can, as by a voice of their own, “We have light in ourselves.” I answer: Not correctly do you say that you have light in yourselves: you have light, but in the heavens; you have light, but in the moon, in candles, if it happen to be night, not in yourselves: for, being shut, you lose what you perceive when open. Not in yourselves have you light; keep the light if you can when the sun is set: ’tis night, enjoy the light of night; keep the light when the candle is withdrawn; but since you remain in darkness when the candle is withdrawn, you have not light in yourselves. Consequently, to have light in oneself is not to need light from another. Behold, whoso understands wherein He shows that the Son is equal with the Father, when He saith, “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son also to have life in Himself;” that there may be only this difference between the Father and the Son, that the Father hath life in Himself, which none gave Him, whilst the Son hath life in Himself which the Father gave.

12. But here also arises a cloud that must be scattered. Let us not lose heart, let us strive in earnest. Here are pastures of the mind; let us not disdain them, that we may live. Behold, sayest thou, thyself confessest that the Father hath given life to the Son, that He may have life in Himself, even as the Father hath life in Himself; that the Father not lacking, the Son may not lack; that as the Father is life, so the Son may be life; and both united one life, not two lives; because God is one, not two Gods; and this same is to be life. How, then, is the Father said to have given life to the Son? Not so as if the Son had been without life before, and received life from the Father that He might live; for if it were so, He would not have life in Himself. Behold, I was speaking of the soul. The soul exists; though it be not wise, though 390 Rom. iv. 5. it be not righteous, though it be not godly, it is soul. It is one thing for it to be soul, but another thing to be wise, to be righteous, to be godly. Something there is, then, in which it is not yet wise, not yet righteous, not yet godly. Nevertheless it is not therefore nothing, it is not therefore non-life; for it shows itself to be alive by certain of its own actions, although it does not show itself to be wise, godly, or righteous. For if it were not living it would not move the body, would not command the feet to walk, the hands to work, the eyes to look, the ears to hear; would not open the mouth for speaking, nor move the tongue to distinction of speech. So, then, by these operations it shows itself to have life, and to be something which is better than the body. But does it in any wise show itself by these operations to be wise, godly, or righteous? Do not the foolish, the wicked, the unrighteous walk, work, see, hear, speak? But when the soul rises to something which itself is not, which is above itself, and from which its being is, then it gets wisdom, righteousness, holiness, which so long as it was without, it was dead, and did not have the life by which itself should live, but only that by which the body was quickened. For that in the soul by which the body is quickened is one thing, that by which the soul itself is quickened is another. Better, certainly, than the body is the soul, but better than the soul itself is God. The soul, even if it be foolish, ungodly, unrighteous, is the life of the body. But since its own life is God, just as it supplies vigor, comeliness, activity, the functions of the limbs to the body, while it exists in the body; so, in like manner, while God, its life, is in the soul, He supplies to it wisdom, godliness, righteousness, charity. Accordingly, what the soul supplies to the body, and what God supplies to the soul, are of a different kind: the soul quickens and is quickened. It quickens while dead, even if itself is not quickened. But when the word comes, and is poured into the hearers, and they not only hear, but are made obedient, the soul rises from its death to its life—that is, from unrighteousness, from folly, from ungodliness, to its God, who is to it wisdom, righteousness, light. Let it rise to Him, and be enlightened by Him. “Come near,” saith he, “to Him.” And what shall we have? “And be enlightened.”391 If, therefore, by “coming to” ye are enlightened, and by “departing from” ye become darkened, your light was not in yourselves, but in your God. Come to Him that ye may rise again: if ye depart from Him, ye shall die. If by coming to Him ye live, and by departing from Him ye die, your life was not in yourselves. For the same is your life which is your light. “Because with Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light we shall see light.” 392

13. Not, then, in like manner as the soul is one thing before it is enlightened, and becomes a better thing when it is enlightened, by participation of a better; not so, I say, was the Word of God, the Son of God, something else before He received life, that He should have life by participation; but He has life in Himself, and is consequently Himself the very life. What is 391 Ps. xxxiii. 5. 392 Ps. xxxv. 10. it, then, that He saith, “hath given to the Son to have life in Himself”? I would say it briefly, He begot the Son. For it is not that He existed without life, and received life, but He is life by being begotten. The Father is life not by being begotten; the Son is life by being begotten. The Father is of no father; the Son is of God the Father. The Father in His being is of none, but in that He is Father, ’tis because of the Son. But the Son also, in that He is Son, ’tis because of the Father: in His being, He is of the Father. This He said, therefore: “hath given life to the Son, that He might have it in Himself.” Just as if He were to say, “The Father, who is life in Himself, begot the Son, who should be life in Himself.” Indeed, He would have this dedit (hath given) to be understood for the same thing as genuit (hath begotten). It is like as if we said to a person, “God hath given thee being.” To whom? If to some one already existing, then He gave him not being, because he who could receive existed before it was given him. When, therefore, thou hearest it said, “He gave thee being,” thou wast not in being to receive, but thou didst receive, that thou shouldst be by coming into existence. The builder gave to this house that it should be. But what did he give to it? He gave it to be a house. To what did he give? To this house. Gave it what? To be a house. How could he give to a house that it should be a house? For if the house was, to what did he give to be a house, when the house existed already? What, then, does that mean, “gave it to be a house”? It means, he brought to pass that it should be a house. Well, then, what gave He to the Son? Gave Him to be the Son, begot Him to be life—that is, “gave Him to have life in Himself” that He should be the life not needing life, that He may not be understood as having life by participation. For if He had life by par ticipation, He might, by losing, be without life. Do not take, nor think, nor believe this to be possible respecting the Son. Wherefore the Father continues the life, the Son continues the life: the Father, life in Himself, not from the Son; the Son, life in Himself, but from the Father. Begotten of the Father, that He might live in Himself; but the Father, not begotten, life in Himself. Nor did He beget the Son less than Himself to become equal by growth. For surely He by whom, being perfect, the times were created, was not assisted by time towards His own perfection. Before all time, He is co-eternal with the Father. For the Father has never been without the Son; but the Father is eternal, therefore also the Son co-eternal. Soul, what of thee? Thou wast dead, didst lose life; hear then the Father through the Son. Arise, take to thee life, that in Him who has life in Himself thou mayest receive the life which is not in thee. He that giveth thee life, then, is the Father and the Son; and the first resurrection is accomplished when thou risest to partake of the life which thou art not thyself, and by partaking art made living. Rise from thy death to thy life, which is thy God, and pass from death to eternal life. For the Father hath eternal life in Himself; and unless He had begotten such a Son as had life in Himself, it could not be that as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, so also the Son should quicken whom He will.

14. But what of that resurrection of the body? For these who hear and live, whence live, except by hearing? For “the friend of the Bridegroom standeth and heareth Him, and rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice:”393 not because of his own voice; that is to say, they hear and live by partaking, not by coming into being; and all that hear live, because all that obey live. Tell us something, O Lord, also of the resurrection of the flesh; for there have been those who denied it, asserting that this is the only resurrection which is wrought by faith. Of which resurrection the Lord has just now made mention, and inflamed our desire, because “the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall live.” It is not some of those who hear shall live, and others shall die; but “all that hear shall live,” because all that obey shall live. Behold, we see a resurrection of the mind; let us not therefore let go our faith of the resurrection of the flesh. And unless Thou, O Lord Jesus, declare to us this, whom shall we oppose to those who assert the contrary? For truly all sects that have undertaken to engraft any religion upon men have allowed this resurrection of minds; otherwise, it might be said to them, If the soul rise not, why speakest thou to me? What meanest thou to do in me? If thou dost not make of the worse a better, why speakest thou? If thou dost not make a righteous of the unrighteous, why speakest thou? But if thou dost make righteous of the unrighteous, godly of the ungodly, wise of the foolish, thou confessest that my soul doth rise again, if I comply with thee and believe. So, then, all those that have founded any sect, even of false religion, while they wished to be believed, could not but admit this resurrection of minds: all have agreed concerning this; but many have denied the resurrection of the flesh, and affirmed that the resurrection had taken place already in faith. Such the apostle resisteth, saying, “Of whom is Hymeneus and Philetus, who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection hath taken place already, and overthrow the faith of some.” 394 They said that the resurrection had taken place already, but in such manner that another was not to be expected; and they blamed people who were looking for a resurrection of the flesh, just as if the resurrection which was promised were already accomplished in the act of believing, namely, in the mind. The apostle censures these. Why does he censure them? Did they not affirm what the Lord spoke just now: “The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live”? But, saith Jesus to thee, it is of the life of minds that I am hitherto speaking: I am not yet speaking of the life of bodies; but I speak of the life of that which is the life of bodies, that is, of the life of souls, in which the life of bodies exists. For I know that there are bodies lying in the tombs; I know also that your bodies will lie in the tombs. I am not speaking of that resurrection, but I speak of this; in this, rise ye again, lest ye rise to punishment in that. But that ye may know that I speak also of that, what do I add? “For as the Father hath life in Himself, even so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” This life which the Father is, which the Son is, to what does it pertain? To the soul or to the body? It is not surely the body that 393 John iii. 29. 394 2 Tim. ii. 17, 18. is sensible of that life of wisdom, but the rational mind. For not every soul hath capacity to apprehend wisdom. A brute beast, in fact, has a soul, but the soul of the brute beast cannot apprehend wisdom. It is the human soul, then, that can perceive this life which the Father hath in Himself, and hath given to the Son to have in Himself; because that is “the true light which enlighteneth,” not every soul, but “every man coming into this world.” When, therefore, I speak to the mind itself, let it hear, that is, let it obey and live.

15. Wherefore, keep not silent, O Lord, concerning the resurrection of the flesh; lest men believe it not, and we continue reasoners, not preachers. But “as the Father hath life in Himself, even so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” Let them that hear, understand; let them believe that they may understand; let them obey that they may live. And that they may not suppose that the resurrection is finished here, let them hear this further: “and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also.” Who hath given? The Father. To whom hath He given? To the Son; namely, to whom He gave to have life in Himself, to the same hath He given authority to execute judgment. “Because He is the Son of man.” For this is the Christ, both Son of God and Son of man. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God.” Behold, how He hath given Him to have life in Himself! But because “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” was made man of the Virgin Mary, He is the Son of man. What, therefore, hath He received as Son of man? Authority to execute judgment. What judgment? That in the end of the world. Then also there will be a resurrection, but a resurrection of bodies. So, then, God raiseth up souls by Christ, the Son of God; bodies He raiseth up by the same Christ, the Son of man. “Hath given Him authority.” He should not have this authority did He not receive it; and He should be a man without authority. But the same who is Son of God is also Son of man. For by adhering to the unity of person, the Son of man with the Son of God is made one person, and the Son of God is the same person which the Son of man is. But what characteristic it has, and wherefore, must be distinguished. The Son of man has soul and body. The Son of God, which is the Word of God, has man, as the soul has body. And just as soul having body does not make two persons, but one man; so the Word, having man, maketh not two persons, but one Christ. What is man? A rational soul, having a body. What is Christ? The Word of God, having man. I see of what things I speak, who I the speaker am, and to whom I am speaking.

16. Now hear concerning the resurrection of bodies, not me, but the Lord about to speak, on account of those who have risen again by a resurrection from death, by cleaving to life. To what life? To a life which knows not death. Why knows not death? Because it knows not mutability. Why knows not mutability? Because it is life in itself. “And hath given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man.” What judgment, what kind of judgment? “Marvel not at this” which I have said,—gave Him authority to execute judgment,—“for the hour is coming.” He does not adds “and now is:” therefore He means to make known to us a certain hour in the end of the world. The hour is now that the dead rise, the hour will be in the end of the world that the dead rise: but that they rise now in the mind, then in the flesh; that they rise now in the mind by the Word of God, the Son of God; then in the flesh by the Word of God made flesh, the Son of man. For it will not be the Father Himself that will come to judgment, notwithstanding the Father doth not withdraw Himself from the Son. How, then, is it that the Father Himself will not come? In that He will not be seen in the judgment. “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.”395 That form which stood before the judge, will be Judge: that form will judge which was judged; for it was judged unjustly, it will judge justly. There will come the form of a servant, and that same will be apparent. For how could the form of God be made apparent to the just and to the unjust? If the judgment were to be only among the just, then the form of God might appear as to the just. But because the judgment is to be of the just and of the unjust, and that it is not permitted to the wicked to see God,—for “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,”396—such a Judge will appear as may be seen by those whom He is about to crown, and by those whom He is about to condemn. Hence the form of a servant will be seen, the form of God will be hid. The Son of God will be hid in the servant, and the Son of man will be manifest, because to Him “hath He given authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man.” And because He alone will appear in the form of a servant, but the Father not, since He has not taken upon Him the form of a servant; for that reason He saith above: “The Father judgeth not any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son.” Rightly then had it been deferred, that the propounder might Himself be the interpreter. For before it was hidden; now, as I think, it is already manifest, that “He gave Him authority to execute judgment,” that “the Father judgeth not any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son:” because the judgment is to be by that form which the Father hath not. And what kind of judgment? “Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming:” not that which now is, for the souls to rise; but that which is to be, for the bodies to rise.

17. Let Him declare this more distinctly, that the heretical denier of the resurrection of the body may not find a pretext for sophistical cavil, although the meaning already shines out clearly. When it was said above, “The hour is coming,” He added, “and now is;” but just now, “The hour is coming,” He has not added, “and now is.” Let Him, however, by the open truth, burst asunder all handles, all loops and pegs of sophistical attack, all the nooses of ensnaring objections. “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves.” What more evident? what more distinct? Bodies are in the graves; souls are not in the graves, either of just or of unjust. The soul of the just man was in the bosom of Abraham; the unjust man’s soul was in hell, tormented: neither the one nor the other was in the grave. 395 John xix. 37. 396 Matt. v. 8. Above, when He saith, “The hour is coming, and now is,” I beseech you give earnest heed. Ye know, brethren, that we get the bread of the belly with toil; with how much greater toil the bread of the mind! With labor you stand and hear, but with greater we stand and speak. If we labor for your sake, you ought to labor with us for your own sake. Above, then, when He said, “The hour is coming,” and added, “and now is,” what did He subjoin? “When the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” He did not say, “All the dead shall hear, and they that hear shall live;” for He meant the unrighteous to be understood. And is it so, that all the unrighteous obey the gospel? The apostle says openly, “But not all obey the gospel.”397 But they that hear shall live, because all that obey the gospel shall pass to eternal life by faith: yet all do not obey; and this is now. But certainly, in the end, “All that are in the graves,” both the just and the unjust, “shall hear His voice, and come forth.” How is it He would not say, “and shall live”? All, indeed, will come forth, but all will not live. For in that which He said above, “And they that hear shall live,” He meant it to be understood that there is in that very hearing and obeying an eternal and blessed life, which not all that shall come forth from the graves will have. Here, then, both in the mention of graves, and by the expression of a “coming forth” from the graves, we openly understand a resurrection of bodies.

18. “All shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” And where is judgment, if all shall hear and all shall come forth? It is as if all were confusion; I see no distinguishing. Certainly Thou hast received authority to judge, because Thou art the Son of man: behold, Thou wilt be present in the judgment; the bodies will rise again; but tell us something of the judgment itself, that is, of the separation of the evil and the good. Hear this further, then: “They that have done good into the resurrection of life; they that have done evil into the resurrection of judgment.” When above He spoke of a resurrection of minds and souls, did He make any distinction? No, for all “that hear shall live;” because by hearing, viz. by obeying, shall they live. But certainly not all will go to eternal life by rising and coming forth from the graves,—only they that have done well; and they that have done ill, to judgment. For here He has put judgment for punishment. There will also be a separation, not such as there is now. For now we are separated, not by place, but by character, affections, desires, faith, hope, charity. Now we live together with the unjust, though the life of all is not the same: in secret we are distinguished, in secret we are separated; as grain on the floor, not as grain in the granary. On the floor, grain is both separated and mixed: separated, because severed from the chaff; mixed, because not yet winnowed. Then there will be an open separation; a distinguishing of life just as of the character, a separation as there is in wisdom, so also will there be in bodies. They that have done well will go to live with the angels of God; they that have done evil, to be tormented with the devil and his angels. And the form of a servant will 397 Rom. x. 16. pass away. For to this end He had manifested Himself, that He might execute judgment. After the judgment, He shall go hence, will lead with Him the body of which He is the head, and deliver up the kingdom of God.398 Then will openly be seen that form of God which could not be seen by the wicked, to whose vision the form of a servant must be shown. He says also in another place on this wise: “These shall go away into everlasting burning” (speaking of certain on the left), “but the just into life eternal;”399 of which life He says in another place: “And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”400 Then will He be there manifested, “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”401 Then He will manifest Himself, as He has promised to manifest Himself to them that love Him. For “he that loveth me,” saith He, “keepeth my commandments; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”402 He was present in person with those to whom He was speaking: but they saw the form of a servant, they did not see the form of God. They were being led on His own beast to His dwelling to be healed; but now being healed, they will see, because, saith He, “I will manifest myself to him.” How is He shown equal to the Father? When He says to Philip, “He that seeth me seeth my Father also.”403

19. “I cannot of myself do anything: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just.” Else we might have said to Him, “Thou wilt judge, and the Father will not judge, for ‘all judgment hath He given to the Son;’ it is not, therefore, according to the Father that Thou wilt judge.” Hence He added, “I cannot of myself do anything: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” Undoubtedly the Son quickeneth whom He will. He seeketh not His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him. Not my own, my proper will; not mine, not the Son of man’s; not mine to resist God. For men do their own will, not God’s, when they do what they list, not what God commands; but when they do what they list, so as yet to follow God’s will, they do not their own will, notwithstanding they do what they list to do. Do what thou art bidden willingly, and thus shall thou both do what thou willest, and also not do thine own will, but His that biddeth.

20. What then? “As I hear, I judge.” The Son “heareth,” and the Father “showeth” to Him, and the Son seeth the Father doing. But we had deferred these matters, in order to handle them, so far as might lie in our abilities, with somewhat greater plainness and fullness, 398 1 Cor. xv. 24. 399 Matt. xxv. 46. 400 John xvii. 3. 401 Phil. ii. 6. 402 John xiv. 21. 403 John xiv. 19. should time and strength remain to us after finishing the perusal of the passage. If I say that I am able to speak yet further, you perhaps are not able to go on hearing. Again, perhaps, in your eagerness to hear, you say, “We are able.” Better, then, that I should confess my weakness, that, being already fatigued, I am not able to speak longer, than that, when you are already satiated, I should continue to pour into you what you cannot well digest. Then, as to this promise, which I deferred until today, should there be an opportunity, hold me, with the Lord’s help, your debtor until to-morrow.

1. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ, especially those recorded by the Evangelist John,—who not without cause leaned on the Lord’s bosom, that he might drink in the secrets of that higher wisdom, and by evangelizing give forth again what by loving he had drunk in,—are so secret and profound of understanding, that they trouble all who are perverse of heart, and exercise all who are in heart upright. Wherefore, beloved, give heed to these few words that have been read. Let us see if in any wise we can, by His own gift and help who has willed His words to be recited to us, which at that time were heard and committed to writing that they might now be read, what He means in what ye have now heard Him say: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing: for what things soever the Father doeth, these same the Son also doeth in like manner.”

2. Now you need to be reminded whence this discourse arose, by reason of what precedes this passage, where the Lord had cured a certain man among those who were lying in the five porches of that pool of Solomon, and to whom He had said, “Take up thy bed, and go unto thy house.” But this He had done on the Sabbath; and hence the Jews, being troubled, were falsely accusing Him as a destroyer and transgressor of the law. He then said to them, “My Father worketh even until now, and I work.”404 For they, taking the observance of the Sabbath in a carnal sense, fancied that God had, as it were, slept after the labor of framing the world even to this day; and that therefore He had sanctified that day, from which He began to rest as from labor. Now, to our fathers of old there was ordained a sacrament of the Sabbath,405 which we Christians observe spiritually, in abstaining from every servile work, that is, from every sin (for the Lord saith, “Every one that committeth sin is the servant of sin”), and in having rest in our heart, that is, spiritual tranquillity. And although in this life we strive after this rest, yet not until we have departed this life shall we attain to that perfect rest. But the reason why God is said to have rested is, that He made no creature after all was finished. Moreover, the Scripture called it rest, to admonish us that after good works we shall rest. For thus we have it written in Genesis, “And God made all things very good, and God rested on the seventh day,” in order that thou, O man, considering that God Himself is said to have rested after good works, shouldest not expect rest for thyself, until after thou hast wrought good works; and even as God after He made man in His own image and likeness, and in him finished all His works very good, rested on the seventh day, so mayest thou also not expect rest to thyself, except thou return to that likeness in which thou 404 John v. 17. 405 Ex. xx. 8. wast made, which likeness thou hast lost by sinning. For, in reality, God cannot be said to have toiled, who “said, and they were done.” Who is there that, after such facility of work, desires to rest as if after labor? If He commanded and some one resisted Him, if He commanded and it was not done, and labored that it might be done, then justly He should be said to have rested after labor. But when in that same book of Genesis we read, “God said, Let there be light, and there was light; God said, Let there be a firmament, and the firmament was made,406 and all the rest were made immediately at His word: to which also the psalm testifies, saying, “He spake, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created,” 407—how could He require rest after the world was made, as if to enjoy leisure after toil, He who in commanding never toiled? Consequently these sayings are mystical, and are laid down in this wise that we may be looking for rest after this life, provided we have done good works. Accordingly, the Lord, restraining the impudence and refuting the error of the Jews, and showing them that they did not think rightly of God, says to them, when they were offended at His working men’s healing on the Sabbath, “My Father worketh until now, and I work:” do not therefore suppose that my Father so rested on the Sabbath, that thenceforth He doth not work; but even as He now worketh, so I also work. But as the Father without toil, so too the Son without toil. God “said, and they were done;” Christ said to the impotent man, “Take up thy bed, and go unto thy house,” and it was done.

3. But the catholic faith has it, that the works of the Father and of the Son are not separable. This is what I wish, if possible, to speak to you, beloved; but, according to those words of the Lord, “he that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”408 But he that is not able to receive it, let him not charge it on me, but on his own dullness; and let him turn to Him that opens the heart, that He may pour in what He freely giveth. And, lastly, if any one may not have understood, because I have not declared it as I ought to have declared it, let him excuse the weakness of man, and supplicate the divine goodness. For we have within a Master, Christ. Whatever ye are not able to receive through your ear and my mouth, turn ye in your heart to Him who both teacheth me what to speak, and distributeth to you in what measure He deigns. He who knows what to give, and to whom to give, will help him that seeketh, and open to him that knocketh. And if so be that He give not, let no one call himself forsaken. For it may be that He delays to give something, but He leaves none hungry. If, indeed, He give not at the hour, He is exercising the seeker, He is not scorning the suitor. Look ye, then, and give heed to what I wish to say, even if I should not be able to say it. The catholic faith, confirmed by the Spirit of God in His saints, has this against all heretical perverseness, that the works of the Father and of the Son are inseparable. What is this that I have said? As the 406 Gen. i. 3, 6, 7. 407 Ps. xxxiii. 9. 408 Matt. xix. 12. Father and the Son are inseparable, so also the works of the Father and of the Son are inseparable. How are the Father and the Son inseparable, since Himself said, “I and the Father are one?” 409 Because the Father and the Son are not two Gods, but one God, the Word and He whose the Word is, One and the Only One, Father and Son bound together by charity, One God, and the Spirit of Charity also one, so that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is made the Trinity. Therefore, not only of the Father and Son, but also of the Holy Spirit; as there is equality and inseparability of persons, so also the works are inseparable. I will tell you yet more plainly what is meant by “the works are inseparable.” The catholic faith does not say that God the Father made something, and the Son made some other thing; but what the Father made, that also the Son made, that also the Holy Spirit made. For all things were made by the Word; when “He spoke and they were done,” it is by the Word they were done, by Christ they were done. For “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: all things were made by Him.” If all things were made by Him, “God said, Let there be light, and there was light; in the Word He made, by the Word He made.

4. Behold, then, we have now heard the Gospel, where He answered the Jews who were indignant “that He not only broke the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.”410 For so it is written in the foregoing paragraph. When, therefore, the Son of God, the Truth, made answer to their erring indignation, saith He, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing;” as if He said, “Why are ye offended because I have said that God is my Father, and that I make myself equal with God? I am equal in that wise that He begat me; I am equal in that wise that He is not from me, but I from Him.” For this is implied in these words: “The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing.” That is, whatever the Son hath to do, the doing it He hath of the Father. Why of the Father hath He the doing it? Because of the Father He hath it that He is Son. Why hath He it of the Father to be Son? Because of the Father He hath it that He is able, of the Father that He is. For, to the Son, both to be able and to be is the self-same thing. It is not so with man. Raise your hearts by all means from a comparison of human weakness, that lies far beneath; and should any of us perhaps reach to the secret, and, while awe-struck by the brilliance as it were of a great light, should discern somewhat, and not remain wholly ignorant; yet let him not imagine that he understands the whole, lest he should become proud, and lose what knowledge he has gotten. With man, to be and to be able are different things. For sometimes the man is, and yet cannot what he wills; sometimes, again, the man is in such wise, that he can what he wills; therefore his being and his being able are different things. For if man’s 409 John x. 30. 410 John v. 18. esse and posse were the same thing, then he could when he would. But with God it is not so, that His substance to be is one thing, and His power to be able another thing; but whatever is His, and whatever He is, is consubstantial with Him, because He is God: it is not so that in one way He is, in another way is able; He has the esse and the posse together, because He has to will and to do together. Since, then, the power of the Son is of the Father, therefore also the substance of the Son is of the Father; and since the substance of the Son is of the Father, therefore the power of the Son is of the Father. In the Son, power and substance are not different: the power is the self-same that the substance is; the substance to be, the power to be able. Accordingly, because the Son is of the Father, He said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything.” Because He is not Son from Himself, therefore He is not able from Himself.

5. He appears to have made Himself as it were less, when He said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” Hereupon heretical vanity lifts the neck; theirs, indeed, who say that the Son is less than the Father, of less authority, of less majesty, of less possibility, not understanding the mystery of Christ’s words. But attend, beloved, and see how they are confounded in their carnal intellect by the words of Christ. And this is what I said a little before, that the word of God troubles all perverse hearts, just as it exercises pious hearts, especially that spoken by the Evangelist John. For they are deep words that are spoken by him, not random words, nor such as may be easily understood. So, a heretic, if he happen to hear these words, immediately rises and says to us, “Lo, the Son is less than the Father; hear the words of the Son, who says, ‘The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing.’” Wait; as it is written, “Be meek to hear the word, that thou mayest understand.”411 Well, suppose that because I assert the power and majesty of the Father and of the Son to be equal, I was disconcerted at hearing these words, “The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing.” Well, I, being disconcerted at these words, will ask thee, who seemest to thyself to have instantly understood them, a question. We know in the Gospel that the Son walked upon the sea;412 when saw He the Father walk upon the sea? Here now he is disconcerted. Lay aside, then, thy understanding of the words, and let us examine them together. What do we then? We have heard the words of the Lord: “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” The Son walked upon the sea, the Father never walked upon the sea. Yet certainly “the Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.”

6. Return then with me to what I was saying, in case it is so to be understood that we may both escape from the question. For I see how I, according to the catholic faith, may escape without tripping or stumbling; whilst thou, on the other hand, shut in on every side, 411 Ecclus. v. 13. 412 Matt. xiv. 25. art seeking a way of escape. See by what way thou hast entered. Perhaps thou hast not understood this that I said, See by what way thou hast entered: hear Himself saying, “I am the door.” 413 Not without cause, then, art thou seeking how thou mayest get out; and this only thou findest, that thou hast not entered by the door, but fell in over the wall. Therefore raise thyself up from thy fall how thou canst, and enter by the door, that thou mayest go in without stumbling, and go out without straying. Come by Christ, not bringing forward of thy own heart what thou mayest say; but what He shows, that speak. Behold how the catholic faith gets clear of this question. The Son walked upon the sea, planted the feet of flesh on the waves: the flesh walked, and the divinity directed. But when the flesh was walking and the divinity directing, was the Father absent? If absent, how doth the Son Himself say, “but the Father abiding in me, Himself doeth the works?”414 If the Father, abiding in the Son, Himself doeth His works, then that walking upon the sea was made by the Father, and through the Son. Accordingly, that walking is an inseparable work of Father and Son. I see both acting in it. Neither the Father forsook the Son, nor the Son left the Father. Thus, whatever the Son doeth, He doeth not without the Father; because whatever the Father doeth, He doeth not without the Son.

7. We have got clear of this question. Mark ye that rightly we say the works of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit are inseparable. But as thou understandest it, lo, God made the light, and the Son saw the Father making light, according to thy carnal understanding, who wilt have it that He is less, because He said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” God the Father made light; what other light did the Son make? God the Father made the firmament, the heaven between waters and waters; and the Son saw Him, according to thy dull and sluggish understanding. Well, since the Son saw the Father making the firmament, and also said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing,” then show me the other firmament made by the Son. Hast thou lost the foundation? But they that are “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone,” are brought into a state of peace in Christ;415 nor do they strive and wander in heresy. Therefore we understand that the light was made by God the Father, but through the Son; that the firmament was made by God the Father, but through the Son. For “all things were made through Him, and without Him was nothing made.” Cast out thine understanding, which ought not to be called understanding, but evidently foolishness. God the Father made the world; what other world did the Son make? Show me the Son’s world. Whose is this world in which we are? Tell us, by whom made? If thou sayest, “By the Son, not by the Father,” then thou hast 413 John x. 7. 414 John xiv. 10. 415 Eph. ii. 14–20. erred from the Father; if thou sayest, “By the Father, not by the Son,” the Gospel answers thee thus, “And the world was made by (through) Him, and the world knew Him not.” Acknowledge Him, then, by whom the world was made, and be not among those who knew not Him that made the world.

8. Wherefore the works of the Father and of the Son are inseparable. Moreover, this, “The Son cannot do anything of Himself,” would mean the same thing as if He were to say, “The Son is not from Himself.” For if He is a Son, He was begotten; if begotten, He is from Him of whom He is begotten. Nevertheless, the Father begat Him equal to Himself. Nor was aught wanting to Him that begat; He who begat a co-eternal required not time to beget: who produced the Word of Himself, required not a mother to beget by; the Father begetting did not precede the Son in age, so that He should beget a Son younger than Himself. But perhaps some one may say, that after many ages God begat a Son in His old age. Even as the Father is without age, so the Son is without growth; neither has the one grown old nor the other increased, but equal begat equal, eternal begat eternal. How, says some one, has eternal begat eternal? As a temporary flame generates a temporary light. The generating flame is coeval with the light which it generates: the generating flame does not precede in time the generated light; but from the moment the flame begins, from that moment the light begins. Show me flame without light, and I show thee God the Father without Son. Accordingly, “the Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing,” implies, that for the Son to see and to be begotten of the Father, is the same thing. His seeing and His substance are not different; nor are His power and substance different. All that He is, He is of the Father; all that He can is of the Father; because what He can and what He is is one thing, and all of the Father.

9. Moreover, He goes on in His own words, and troubles those that understand the matter amiss, in order to recall the erring to a right apprehension of it. After He had said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing;” lest a carnal understanding of the matter should by chance creep in and turn the mind aside, and a man should imagine as it were two mechanics, one a master, the other a learner, attentively observing the master while making, say a chest, so that, as the master made the chest, the learner should make another chest according to the appearance which he looked upon while the master wrought; lest, I say, the carnal mind should frame to itself any such twofold notion in the case of the divine unity, going on, He saith, “For what things soever the Father doeth, these same also the Son doeth in like manner.” It is not, the Father doeth some, the Son others like them, but the same in like manner. For He saith not, What things soever the Father doeth, the Son also doeth others the like; but saith He, “What things soever the Father doeth, these same also the Son doeth in like manner.” What things the Father doeth, these also the Son doeth: the Father made the world, the Son made the world, the Holy Ghost made the world. If three Gods, then three worlds; if one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, then one world was made by the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Ghost. Consequently the Son doeth those things which also the Father doeth, and doeth not in a different manner; He both doeth these, and doeth them in like manner.

10. After He had said, “these doeth,” why did He add, “in like manner doeth”? Lest another distorted understanding or error should spring up in the mind. Thou seest, for instance, a man’s work: in man there is mind and body; the mind rules the body, but there is a great difference between body and mind: the body is visible, the mind is invisible: there is a great difference between the power and virtue of the mind and that of any kind of body whatever, be it even a heavenly body. Still the mind rules its own body, and the body doeth; and what the mind appears to do, this the body doeth also. Thus the body appears to do this same thing that the mind doeth, but not “in like manner.” How doeth this same, but not in like manner? The mind frames a word in itself; it commands the tongue, and the tongue produces the word which the mind framed: the mind made, and the tongue made; the lord of the body made, and the servant made; but that the servant might make, it received of its lord what to make, and made while the lord commanded. The same thing was made by both, but was it in like manner? How not in like manner? says some one. See, the word that my mind formed, remains in me; that which my tongue made, passed through the smitten air, and is not. When thou hast said a word in thy mind, and uttered it by thy tongue, return to thy mind, and see that the word which thou hast made is there still. Has it remained on thy tongue, just as it has in thy mind? What was uttered by the tongue, the tongue made by sounding, the mind made by thinking; but what the tongue uttered has passed away, what the mind thought remains. Therefore the body made that which the mind made, but not in like manner. For the mind, indeed, made that which the mind may hold, but the tongue made what sounds and strikes the ear through the air. Dost thou chase the syllables, and cause them to remain? Well, not in such manner the Father and the Son; but “these same doeth,” and “in like manner doeth.” If God made heaven that remains, this heaven that remains the Son made. If God the Father made man that is mortal, the same man that is mortal the Son made. What things soever the Father made that endure, these things that endure made also the Son, because in like manner He made; and what things soever the Father made that are temporal, these same things that are temporal made also the Son, because He made not only the same, but also in like manner made. For the Father made by the Son, since by the Word the Father made all things.

11. Seek in the Father and Son a separation, thou findest none; no, not if thou hast mounted high; no, not even if thou hast reached something above thy mind. For if thou turnest about among the things which thy wandering mind makes for itself, thou talkest with thine own imaginations, not with the Word of God; thine own imaginations deceive thee. Mount also beyond the body, and understand the mind; mount also beyond the mind, and understand God. Thou reachest not unto God, unless thou hast passed beyond the mind; how much less thou reachest unto God, if thou hast tarried in the flesh! They who think of the flesh, how far are they from understanding what God is!—since they would not be there even if they knew the mind. Man recedes far from God when his thoughts are of the flesh; and there is a great difference between flesh and mind, yet a greater between mind and God. If thou art occupied with the mind, thou art in the midway: if thou directest thy attention beneath, there is the body; if above, there is God. Lift thyself up from the body, pass beyond even thyself. For observe what said the psalm, and thou art admonished how God must be thought of: “My tears,” it saith, “were made to me my bread day and night, when it was said to me daily, Where is thy God?” As the pagans may say, “Behold our gods, where is your God?” They indeed show us what is seen; we worship what is not seen. And to whom can we show? To a man who has not sight with which to see? For anyhow, if they see their gods with their eyes, we too have other eyes with which to see our God: for “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”416 Therefore, when he had said that he was troubled, when it was daily said to him, “Where is thy God?” “these things I remembered,” saith he, “because it is daily said to me, Where is thy God?” And as if wishing to lay hold of his God, “These things,” saith he, “I remembered, and poured out my soul above me.”417 Therefore, that I might reach unto my God, of whom it was said to me, “Where is thy God? I poured out my soul,” not over my flesh, but “above me;” I transcended myself, that I might reach unto Him: for He is above me who made me; none reaches to Him but he that passes beyond himself.

12. Consider the body: it is mortal, earthy, weak, corruptible; away with it. Yes, perhaps thou sayest, but the body is temporal. Think then of other bodies, the heavenly; they are greater, better, more magnificent. Look at them, moreover, attentively. They roll from east to west, they stand not; they are seen with the eyes, not only by man, but even by the beast of the field. Pass beyond them too. And how, sayest thou, pass beyond the heavenly bodies, seeing that I walk on the earth? Not in the flesh dost thou pass beyond them, but in the mind. Away with them too: though they shine ever so much, they are bodies; though they glitter from heaven, they are bodies. Come, now that perhaps thou thinkest thou hast not whither to go, after considering all these. And whither am I to go, sayest thou, beyond the heavenly bodies; and what am I to pass beyond with the mind? Hast thou considered all these? I have, sayest thou. By what means hast thou considered them? Let the being that considers appear in person. The being that considers all these, that discriminates, distinguishes, and in a manner weighs them in the balance of wisdom, is really the mind. Doubtless, then, better is the mind with which thou hast contemplated all these things, than these things which thou hast contemplated. This mind, then, is a spirit, not a body. Pass beyond it too. 416 Matt. v. 8. 417 Ps. xli. 4, 5. And that thou mayest see whither thou art to pass beyond, compare that mind itself, in the first place, with the flesh. Heaven forbid that thou shouldest deign so to compare it! Compare it with the brightness of the sun, of the moon, and of the stars; the brightness of the mind is greater. Observe, first, the swiftness of the mind; see whether the scintillation of the thinking mind be not more impetuous than the brilliance of the shining sun. With the mind thou seest the sun rising. How slow is its motion compared with thy mind! What the sun is about to do, thou canst think in a trice. It is about to come from the east to the west; tomorrow rises from another quarter. Where thy thought has done this, the sun still lags behind, and thou hast traversed the whole journey. A great thing, therefore, is the mind. But how do I say is? Pass beyond it also. For the mind, notwithstanding it be better than every kind of body, is itself changeable. Now it knows, now knows not; now forgets, now remembers; now wills, now wills not; now errs, now is right. Pass therefore beyond all changeableness; not only beyond all that is seen, but also beyond all that changes. For thou hast passed beyond the flesh which is seen; beyond heaven, the sun, moon, and stars, which are seen. Pass, too, beyond all that changes. For when thou hadst done with those things that are seen, and hadst come to thy mind, there thou didst find the changeableness of thy mind. Is God at all changeable? Pass then, beyond even thy mind. Pour out thy soul “above thee,” that thou mayest reach unto God, of whom it is said to thee, “Where is thy God?”

13. Do not imagine that thou art to do something beyond a man’s ability. The Evangelist John himself did this. He soared beyond the flesh, beyond the earth which he trod, beyond the seas which he looked upon, beyond the air in which the fowls fly, beyond the sun, the moon, the stars, beyond all the spirits unseen, beyond his own mind, by the very reason of his rational soul. Soaring beyond all these, pouring out his soul above him, whither did he arrive? What did he see? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” If, therefore, thou seest no separation in the light, why seekest thou a separation in the work? See God, see His Word inhering to the Word speaking, that the speaker speaks not by syllables, but this his speaking is a shining out in the brightness of wisdom. What is said of the Wisdom itself? “It is the radiance of eternal light.”418 Observe the radiance of the sun. The sun is in the heaven, and spreads out its brightness over all lands and over all seas, and it is simply a corporal light.

If, indeed, thou canst separate the brightness from the sun, then separate the Word from the Father. I am speaking of the sun. One small, slender flame of a lamp, which can be extinguished by one breath, spreads its light over all that lies near it: thou seest the light generated by the flame spread out; thou seest its emission, but not a separation. Understand, then, beloved brethren, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are inseparably united in themselves; that this Trinity is one God; that all the works of the one God are the 418 Wisd. vii. 26. works of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. All the rest which follows, and which refers to the discourse of our Lord Jesus Christ, now that a discourse is due to you to-morrow also, be present that ye may hear.

1. Yesterday, so far as the Lord vouchsafed to bestow, we discussed with what ability we could, and discerned according to our capacity, how the works of the Father and of the Son are inseparable; and how the Father doeth not some, the Son others, but that the Father doeth all things through the Son, as through His Word, of which it is written, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” Let us to-day look at the words that follow. And of the same Lord let us pray for mercy, and hope that, if He deem it meet, we may understand what is true; but if we should not be able to do this, that we may not go into what is false. For it is better not to know than to go astray; but to know is better than not to know. Therefore, before all things, we ought to strive to know. Should we be able, to God be thanks; but should we not be able meanwhile to arrive at the truth, let us not go to falsehood. For we are bound to consider well what we are, and what we are treating of. We are men bearing flesh, walking in this life; and though now begotten again of the seed of the Word of God, yet in Christ renewed in such manner that we are not yet wholly rid of Adam. For truly our mortal and corruptible part that weighs down the soul419 shows itself to be, and manifestly is, of Adam; but what in us is spiritual, and raises up the soul, is of God’s gift and of His mercy, who has sent His only Son to partake our death with us, and to lead us to His own immortality. The Son we have for our Master, that we may not sin; and for our defender, if we have sinned and have confessed, and been converted; an intercessor for us, if we have desired any good of God; and the bestower of it with the Father, because Father and Son is one God. But He was speaking these things as man to men: God concealed, the man manifest, that He might make them gods that are manifest men; and the Son of God made Son of man, that He might make the sons of men sons of God. By what skill of His wisdom He doeth this, we perceive in His own words. For as a little one He speaks to little ones, but Himself little in such wise that He is also great, and we little, but in Him great. He speaks, in deed as one cherishing and nourishing children at the breast that grow by loving.

2. He had said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing.” We, however, understood it not that the Father doeth something separately, which when the Son seeth, Himself also doeth something of the same kind, after seeing His Father’s work; but when He said, “The Son cannot of Himself do anything, but what He seeth the Father doing,” we understood it that the Son is wholly of the Father—that His whole substance and His whole power are of the Father that begat Him. But just now, when He had said that He doeth in like manner these things which the Father doeth, that we may not understand it to mean that the Father doeth some, the Son others, but that the Son with like 419 Wisd. ix. 15. power doeth the very same which the Father doeth, whilst the Father doeth through the Son, He went on, and said what we have heard read to-day: “For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth.” Again mortal thought is disturbed. The Father showeth to the Son what things Himself doeth; therefore, saith some one, the Father doeth separately, that the Son may be able to see what He doeth. Again, there occur to human thought, as it were, two artificers—as, for instance, a carpenter teaching his son his own art, and showing him whatever he doeth, that the son also may be able to do it. “Showeth Him,” saith He, “all things that Himself doeth.” Is it therefore so, that whilst He doeth, the Son doeth not, that He may be able to see the Father do? Yet, certainly, “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” Hence we see how the Father showeth the Son what He doeth, since the Father doeth nothing but what He doeth through the Son. What hath the Father made? He made the world. Hath He shown the world, when made, to the Son in such wise, that the Son also should make something like it? Then let us see the world which the Son made. Nevertheless, both “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made,” and also “the world was made by Him.”420 If the world was made by Him, and all things were made by Him, and the Father doeth nothing save by the Son, where doth the Father show to the Son what He doeth, if it be not in the Son Himself, through whom He doeth? In what place can the work of the Father be shown to the Son, as though He were doing and sitting outside, and the Son attentively watching the Father’s hand how it maketh? Where is that inseparable Trinity? Where the Word, of which it is said that the same is “the power and the wisdom of God”?421 Where that which the Scripture saith of the same wisdom: “For it is the brightness of the eternal light?”422 Where what was said of it again: “It powerfully reaches from the end even to the end, and ordereth all things sweetly”?423 Whatever the Father doeth, He doeth through the Son: through His wisdom and his power He doeth; not from without doth He show to the Son what He may see, but in the Son Himself He showeth Him what He doeth.

3. What seeth the Father, or rather, what doth the Son see in the Father, that Himself also may do? Perhaps I may be able to speak it, but show me the man who can comprehend it; or perhaps I may be able to think and not speak it; or perhaps I may not be able even to think it. For that divinity excels us, as God excels men, as the immortal excels a mortal, as the eternal excels the temporal. May He inspire and endow us, and out of that fountain of life deign to bedew and to drop somewhat on our thirst, that we may not be parched in this wilderness! Let us say to Him, Lord, to whom we have learnt to say Father. We make bold 420 John i. 3, 10. 421 1 Cor. i. 24. 422 Wisd. vii. 26. 423 Wisd. viii. 1. to say this, because Himself willed it; if only we so live that He may not say to us, “If I am a Father, where is mine honor? if I am Lord, where is my fear?” Let us then say to Him, “Our Father.” To whom do we say, “Our Father”? To the Father of Christ. He, then, who says “Our Father” to the Father of Christ, says to Christ, what else but “Our Brother”? Not, however, as He is the Father of Christ is He in like manner our Father; for Christ never so conjoined us as to make no distinction between Him and us. For He is the Son equal to the Father, the eternal Son with the Father, and co-eternal with the Father; but we became sons through the Son, adopted through the Only-begotten. Hence was it never heard from the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ, when speaking to His disciples, that He said of the supreme God His Father, “Our Father;” but He said either “My Father” or “Your Father.” But He said not “Our Father;” so much so, that in a certain place He used these two expressions: “I go to my God,” saith He, “and to your God.” Why did He not say, “Our God”? Further, He said, “My Father, and your Father;” He said not, “Our Father.” He so joins as to distinguish, distinguishes so as not to disjoin. He wills us to be one in Him, but the Father and Himself one.

4. How much soever then we may understand, and how much soever we may see, we shall not see as the Son seeth, even when we shall be made equal with the angels. For we are something even when we do not see; but what are we when we do not see, other than persons not seeing? And that we may see, we turn to Him whom we may see, and there is formed in us a seeing which was not before, although we were in being. For a man is when not seeing; and the same, when he doth see, is called a man seeing. For him, then, to see is not the same thing as to be a man; for if it were, he would not be man when not seeing. But since he is man when not seeing, and seeks to see what he sees not, he is one who seeks, and who turns to see; and when he has well turned and has seen, he becomes a man seeing, who was before a man not seeing. Consequently, to see is to him a thing that comes and goes; it comes to him when he turns to, and leaves him when he turns away. Is it thus with the Son? Far be it from us to think so. It was never so that He was Son, not seeing, and afterwards was made to see; but to see the Father is to Him the same thing as to be Son. For we, by turning away to sin, lose enlightenment; and by turning to God we receive enlightenment. For the light by which we are enlightened is one thing; we who are enlightened, another thing. But the light itself, by which we are enlightened, neither turns away from itself, nor loses its lucidity, because as light it exists. The Father, then, showeth a thing which He doeth to the Son, in such wise that the Son seeth all things in the Father, and is all things in the Father. For by seeing He was begotten; and by being begotten He seeth. Not, however, that at any time He was not begotten, and afterwards was begotten; nor that at any time He saw not, and afterwards saw. But in what consists His seeing, in the same consists His being, in the same His being begotten, in the same His continuing, in the same His unchanging, in the same His abiding without beginning and without end. Let us not therefore take it in a carnal sense that the Father sitteth and doeth a work, and showeth it to the Son; and the Son seeth the work that the Father doeth, and doeth another work in another place, or out of other materials. For “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” The Son is the Word of the Father. The Father said nothing which He did not say in the Son. For by speaking in the Son what He was about to do through the Son, He begat the Son through whom He made all things.

5. “And greater works than these will He show Him, that ye may marvel.” Here again we are embarrassed. And who is there that may worthily investigate this so great a secret? But now, in that He has deigned to speak to us, Himself opens it. For He would not speak what He would not have us understand; and as He has deigned to speak, without doubt He has excited attention: for does He forsake any whom He has roused to give attentive hearing? We have said that it is not in a temporal sense that the Son knoweth,—that the knowledge of the Son is not one thing, and the Son Himself another; nor one thing His seeing, Himself another; but that the seeing itself is the Son, and the knowledge as well as the wisdom of the Father is the Son; and that that wisdom and seeing is eternal and co-eternal with Him from whom it is; that it is not something that varies by time, nor something produced that was not in being, nor something that vanishes away which did exist. What is it, then, that time does in this case, that He should say, “Greater works than these He will show Him”? “He will show,” that is, “He is about to show.” Hath shown is a different thing from will show: hath shown, we say of an act past; will show, of an act future. What shall we do here, then, brethren? Behold, He whom we had declared to be co-eternal with the Father, in whom nothing is varied by time, in whom is no moving through spaces either of moments or of places, of whom we had declared that He abides ever with the Father seeing, seeing the Father, and by seeing existing; He, I say, here again mentioning times to us, saith, “He will show Him greater works than these.” Is He then about to show something to the Son, which the Son doth not as yet know? What, then, do we make of it? How do we understand this? Behold, our Lord Jesus Christ was above, is beneath. When was He above? When He said, “What things soever the Father doeth, these same also the Son doeth in like manner.” Whence know we that He is now beneath? Hence: “Greater works than these He will show Him.” O Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Word of God, by which all things were made, what is the Father about to show Thee, that as yet Thou knowest not? What of the Father is hid from Thee? What in the Father is hid from Thee, from whom the Father is not hid? What greater works is He about to show Thee? Or greater than what works are they which He is to show Thee? For when He said, “Greater than these,” we ought first to understand the works than which are they greater.

Upon the discourses delivered yesterday and the day before, follows the Gospel lesson of to-day, which we must endeavor to expound in due course, not indeed proportionably to its importance, but according to our ability: both because you take in, not according to the bountifulness of the gushing fountain, but according to your moderate capacity; and we too speak into your ears, not so much as the fountain gives forth, but so much as we are able to take in we convey into your minds,—the matter itself working more fruitfully in your hearts than we in your ears. For a great matter is treated of, not by great masters, nay, rather by very small; but He who, being great, for our sakes became small, gives us hope and confidence. For if we were not encouraged by Him, and invited to understand Him; if He abandoned us as contemptible, since we were not able to partake His divinity if He did not partake our mortality and come to us to speak His gospel to us; if He had not willed to partake with us what in us is abject and most small,—then we might think that He who took on Himself our smallness, had not been willing to bestow on us His own greatness. This I have said lest any should blame us as over-bold in handling these matters, or despair of himself that he should be able to understand, by God’s gift, what the Son of God has deigned to speak to him. Therefore what He has deigned to speak to us, we ought to believe that He meant us to understand. But if we do not understand, He, being asked, gives understanding, who gave His Word unasked.

2. Lo, what these secrets of His words are, consider well. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whoso heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath eternal life.” Surely we are all striving after eternal life: and He saith, “Whoso heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal life.” Then, would He have us hear His word, and yet would He not have us understand it? Since, if in hearing and believing is eternal life, much more in understanding. But the action of piety is faith, the fruit of faith understanding, that we may come to eternal life, when there will be no reading of Gospel to us; but after all pages of reading and the voice of reader and preacher have been removed out of the way, He, who has at this time dispensed to us the gospel, will Himself appear to all that are His, now present with Him with purged heart and in an immortal body never more to die, cleansing and enlightening them, now living and seeing how that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Therefore let us consider at this time who we are, and ponder whom we hear. Christ is God, and He is speaking with men. He would have them to apprehend Him, let Him make them capable; He would have them see Him, let Him open their eyes. It is not, however, without cause that He speaks to us, but because that is true which He promises to us.

1. In a certain place in the Gospel, the Lord says that the prudent hearer of His word ought to be like a man who, wishing to build a house, digs deeply until he comes to the foundation of stability on the rock, and there establishes in security what he builds against the violence of the flood; so that, when the flood comes, it may be rather beaten back by the strength of the building. than bring ruin on that house by the force of its pressure.463 Let us regard the Scripture of God to be, as it were, the field where we wish to build something. Let us not be slothful, nor be content with the surface; let us dig deeply until we come to the rock: “And that rock was Christ.”464

2. The passage read to-day has spoken to us of the witness of the Lord, that He does not hold the witness of men necessary, but has a greater witness than men; and He has told us what this witness is: “The works,” saith He, “which I do bear witness of me.” Then He added, “And the Father that sent me beareth witness of me.” The very works also which He doeth, He says that He has received from the Father. The works, therefore, bear witness, the Father bears witness. Has John borne no witness? He did clearly bear witness, but as a lamp; not to satisfy friends, but to confound enemies: for it had been predicted long before by the person of the Father, “I have prepared a lamp for mine Anointed: I will clothe His enemies with confusion; but upon Him shall flourish my sanctification.”465 Be it that thou wert left in the dark in the night-time, thou didst direct thy attention to the lamp, thou didst admire the lamp, and didst exult at its light. But that lamp says that there is a sun, in which thou oughtest to exult; and though it burns in the night, it bids thee to be looking out for the day. Therefore it is not the case that there was no need of that man’s testimony. For wherefore was he sent, if there was no need of him? But, on the contrary, lest man should stay at the lamp, and think the light of the lamp to be sufficient for him, therefore the Lord neither says that this lamp had been superfluous, nor yet doth He say that thou oughtest to stay at the lamp. The Scripture of God utters another testimony: there undoubtedly God hath borne witness to His Son, and in that Scripture the Jews had placed their hope,—namely, in the law of God, given by Moses His servant. “Search the Scripture,” saith He, “in which ye think ye have eternal life: the same bears witness of me; and ye will not come to me that ye may have life.” Why do ye think that in the Scripture ye have eternal life? Ask itself to whom does it bear witness, and understand what is eternal life. And because for the sake of Moses 463 Matt. vii. 24, 25. 464 1 Cor. x. 4. 465 Ps. cxxxii. 17. they were willing to reject Christ, as an adversary to the ordinances and precepts of Moses, He convicts those same men as by another lamp.

3. For, indeed, all men are lamps, since they can be both lighted and extinguished. Moreover, when the lamps are wise, they shine and glow with the Spirit; yet also, if they did burn and are put out, they even stink. The servants of God remain good lamps by the oil of His mercy, not by their own strength. The free grace of God, truly, is the oil of the lamps. “For I have labored more than they all,” saith a certain lamp; and lest he should seem to burn by his own strength, he added, “But not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”466 All prophecy, therefore, before the coming of the Lord, is a lamp. Of this lamp the Apostle Peter says: “We have a more sure word of prophecy, to which ye do well giving heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.”467 Accordingly the prophets are lamps, and all prophecy one great lamp. What of the apostles? Are not they, too, lamps? They are, clearly. He alone is not a lamp. For He is not lighted and put out; because “even as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” The apostles also, I say, are lamps; and they give thanks because they were both lighted by the light of truth, and are burning with the spirit of charity, and supplied with the oil of God’s grace. If they were not lamps, the Lord would not say to them, “Ye are the light of the world.” For after He said, “Ye are the light of the world,” He shows that they should not think themselves such a light as that of which it is said, “That was the true light, that enlighteneth every man coming into this world.” But this was said of the Lord at that time when He was distinguished from John (the Baptist). Of John the Baptist, indeed, it had been said, “He was not the light, but that he might bear witness of the light.”468 And lest thou shouldst say, How was he not the light, of whom Christ says that “he was a lamp”?—I answer, In comparison of the other light, he was not light. For “that was the true light that enlighteneth every man coming into this world.” Accordingly, when He said also to the disciples, “Ye are the light of the world,” lest they should imagine that anything was attributed to them which was to be understood of Christ alone, and thus the lamps should be extinguished by the wind of pride, when He had said, “Ye are the light of the world,” He immediately subjoined, “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid; neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but an a candlestick, that it may shine on all that are in the house.” But what if He did not call the apostles the candle, but the lighters of the candle, which they were to put on a candlestick? Hear that He called themselves the candle. “So let your light shine,” saith He, “before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify,” not you, but “your Father who is in heaven.”469

1. The miracles performed by our Lord Jesus Christ are indeed divine works, and incite the human mind to rise to the apprehension of God from the things that are seen. But inasmuch as He is not such a substance as may be seen with the eyes, and His miracles in the government of the whole world and the administration of the universal creation are, by their familiar constancy, slightly regarded, so that almost no man deigns to consider the wonderful and stupendous works of God, exhibited in every grain of seed; He has, agreeably to His mercy, reserved to Himself certain works, beyond the usual course and order of nature, which He should perform on fit occasion, that they, by whom His daily works are lightly esteemed, might be struck with astonishment at beholding, not indeed greater, but uncommon works. For certainly the government of the whole world is a greater miracle than the satisfying of five thousand men with five loaves; and yet no man wonders at the former; but the latter men wonder at, not because it is greater, but because it is rare. For who even now feeds the whole world, but He who creates the cornfield from a few grains? He therefore created as God creates. For, whence He multiplies the produce of the fields from a few grains, from the same source He multiplied in His hands the five loaves. The power, indeed, was in the hands of Christ; but those five loaves were as seeds, not indeed committed to the earth, but multiplied by Him who made the earth. In this miracle, then, there is that brought near to the senses, whereby the mind should be roused to attention, there is exhibited to the eyes, whereon the understanding should be exercised, that we might admire the invisible God through His visible works; and being raised to faith and purged by faith, we might desire to behold Him even invisibly, whom invisible we came to know by the things that are visible.

2. Yet it is not enough to observe these things in the miracles of Christ. Let us interrogate the miracles themselves, what they tell us about Christ: for they have a tongue of their own, if they can be understood. For since Christ is Himself the Word of God, even the act of the Word is a word to us. Therefore as to this miracle, since we have heard how great it is, let us also search how profound it is; let us not only be delighted with its surface, but let us also seek to know its depth. This miracle, which we admire on the outside, has something within. We have seen, we have looked at something great, something glorious, and altogether divine, which could be performed only by God: we have praised the doer for the deed. But just as, if we were to inspect a beautiful writing somewhere, it would not suffice for us to praise the hand of the writer, because he formed the letters even, equal and elegant, if we did not also read the information he conveyed to us by those letters; so, he who merely inspects this deed may be delighted with its beauty to admire the doer: but he who understands does, as it were, read it. For a picture is looked at in a different way from that in which a writing is looked at. When thou hast seen a picture, to have seen and praised it is the whole thing; when thou seest a writing, this is not the whole, since thou art reminded also to read it. Moreover, when thou seest a writing, if it chance that thou canst not read, thou sayest, “What do we think that to be which is here written?” Thou askest what it is, when already thou seest it to be something. He of whom thou seekest to be informed what it is that thou hast seen, will show thee another thing. He has other eyes than thou hast. Do you not alike see the form of the letters? But yet you do not alike understand the signs. Well, thou seest and praisest; but he sees, praises, reads and understands. Therefore, since we have seen and praised, let us also read and understand.

3. The Lord on the mount: much rather let us understand that the Lord on the mount is the Word on high. Accordingly, what was done on the mount does not, as it were, lie low, nor is to be cursorily passed by, but must be looked up to. He saw the multitude, knew them to be hungering, mercifully fed them: not only in virtue of His goodness, but also of His power. For what would mere goodness avail, where there was not bread with which to feed the hungry crowd? Did not power attend upon goodness, that crowd had remained fasting and hungry. In short, the disciples also, who were with the Lord, and hungry, themselves wished to feed the multitudes, that they might not remain empty, but had not wherewithal to feed them. The Lord asked, whence they might buy bread to feed the multitude. And the Scripture saith: “But this He said, proving him;” namely, the disciple Philip of whom He had asked; “for Himself knew what He would do.” Of what advantage then was it to prove him, unless to show the disciple’s ignorance? And, perhaps, in showing the disciple’s ignorance He signified something more. This will appear, then, when the sacrament of the five loaves itself will begin to speak to us, and to intimate its meaning: for there we shall see why the Lord in this act wished to exhibit the disciple’s ignorance, by asking what He Himself knew. For we sometimes ask what we do not know, that, being willing to hear, we may learn; sometimes we ask what we do know, wishing to learn whether he whom we ask also knows. The Lord knew both the one and the other; knew both what He asked, for He knew what Himself would do; and He also knew in like manner that Philip knew not this. Why then did He ask, but to show Philip’s ignorance? And why He did this, we shall, as I have said, understand afterwards.

4. Andrew saith: “There is a lad here, who has five loaves and two fishes, but what are these for so many?” When Philip, on being asked, had said that two hundred pennyworth of bread would not suffice to refresh that so great a multitude, there was there a certain lad, carrying five barley loaves and two fishes. “And Jesus saith, Make the men sit down. Now there was there much grass: and they sat down about five thousand men. And the Lord Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks;” He commanded, the loaves were broken, and put before the men that were set down. It was no longer five loaves, but what He had added thereto, who had created that which was increased. “And of the fishes as much as sufficed.” It was not enough that the multitude had been satisfied, there remained also fragments; and these were ordered to be gathered up, that they should not be lost: “And they filled twelve baskets with the fragments.”

5. To run over it briefly: by the five loaves are understood the five books of Moses; and rightly are they not wheaten but barley loaves, because they belong to the Old Testament. And you know that barley is so formed that we get at its pith with difficulty; for the pith is covered in a coating of husk, and the husk itself tenacious and closely adhering, so as to be stripped off with labor. Such is the letter of the Old Testament, invested in a covering of carnal sacraments: but yet, if we get at its pith, it feeds and satisfies us. A certain lad, then, brought five loaves and two fishes. If we inquire who this lad was, perhaps it was the people Israel, which, in a childish sense, carried, not ate. For the things which they carried were a burden while shut up, but when opened afforded nourishment. And as for the two fishes, they appear to us to signify those two sublime persons, in the Old Testament, of priest and of ruler, who were anointed for the sanctifying and governing of the people. And at length Himself in the mystery came, who was signified by those persons: He at length came who was pointed out by the pith of the barley, but concealed by its husk. He came, sustaining in His one person the two characters of priest and ruler: of priest by offering Himself to God as a victim for us; of ruler, because by Him we are governed. And the things that were carried closed are now opened up. Thanks be to Him. He has fulfilled by Himself what was promised in the Old Testament. And He bade the loaves to be broken; in the breaking they are multiplied. Nothing is more true. For when those five books of Moses are expounded, how many books have they made by being broken up, as it were; that is, by being opened and laid out? But because in that barley the ignorance of the first people was veiled, of whom it is said, “Whilst Moses is read, the veil is upon their hearts;” 480 for the veil was not yet removed, because Christ had not yet come; not yet was the veil of the temple rent, while Christ is hanging on the cross: because, I say, the ignorance of the people was in the law, therefore that proving by the Lord made the ignorance of the disciple manifest.

6. Wherefore nothing is without meaning; everything is significant, but requires one that understands: for even this number of the people fed, signified the people that were under the law. For why were there five thousand, but because they were under the law, which is unfolded in the five books of Moses? Why were the sick laid at those five porches, but not healed? He, however, there cured the impotent man, who here fed multitudes with five loaves. Moreover, they sat down upon the grass; therefore understood carnally, and rested in the carnal. “For all flesh is grass.”481 And what were those fragments, but things which the people were not able to eat? We understand them to be certain matters of more hidden 480 2 Cor. iii. 15. 481 Isa. xl. 6. meaning, which the multitude are not able to take in. What remains then, but that those matters of more hidden meaning, which the multitude cannot take in, be entrusted to men who are fit to teach others also, just as were the apostles? Why were twelve baskets filled? This was done both marvellously, because a great thing was done; and it was done profitably, because a spiritual thing was done. They who at the time saw it, marvelled; but we, hearing of it, do not marvel. For it was done that they might see it, but it was written that we might hear it. What the eyes were able to do in their case, that faith does in our case. We perceive, namely, with the mind, what we could not with the eyes: and we are preferred before them, because of us it is said, “Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe.”482 And I add that, perhaps, we have understood what that crowd did not understand. And we have been fed in reality, in that we have been able to get at the pith of the barley.

7. Lastly, what did those men who saw this miracle think? “The men,” saith he, “when they had seen the sign which He had done, said, This is indeed a prophet.” Perhaps they still thought Christ to be a prophet for this reason, namely, that they were sitting on the grass. But He was the Lord of the prophets, the fulfiller of the prophets, the sanctifier of the prophets, but yet a prophet also: for it was said to Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like unto thee.” Like, according to the flesh, but not according to the majesty. And that this promise of the Lord is to be understood concerning Christ Himself, is clearly expounded and read in the Acts of the Apostles.483 And the Lord says of Himself, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country.”484 The Lord is a prophet, and the Lord is God’s Word, and no prophet prophesies without the Word of God: the Word of God is with the prophets, and the Word of God is a prophet. The former times obtained prophets inspired and filled by the Word of God: we have obtained the very Word of God for our prophet. But Christ is in such manner a prophet, the Lord of prophets, as Christ is an angel, the Lord of angels. For He is also called the Angel of great counsel. 485 Nevertheless, what says the prophet elsewhere that not an ambassador, nor an angel, but Himself coming will save them;486 that is, He will not send an ambassador to save them, nor an angel, but Himself will come. Who will come? The Angel himself? Certainly not by an angel will He save them, except that He is so an angel, as also Lord of angels. For angels signify messengers. If Christ brought no message, He would not be called an angel: if Christ prophesied nothing, He would not be called a prophet. He has exhorted us to faith and to laying hold of eternal life; He has proclaimed something present, foretold something future because He proclaimed 482 John xx. 29. 483 Acts vii. 37. 484 John iv. 44. 485 Isa. ix. 6, LXX. 486 Isa. xxxv. 4. the present, thence He was an angel or messenger; because He foretold the future, thence He was a prophet; and that, as the Word of God He was made flesh, thence He was Lord of angels and of prophets.

1. Following upon yesterday’s lesson from the Gospel is that of to-day, upon which this day’s discourse is due to you. When that miracle was wrought, in which Jesus fed the five thousand with five loaves, and the multitudes marveled and said that He was a great prophet that came into the world, then follows this: “When Jesus therefore knew that they came to seize Him, and to make Him king, He escaped again unto the mountain alone.” It is therefore given to be understood that the Lord, when He sat on the mountain with His disciples, and saw the multitudes coming to Him, had descended from the mountain, and fed the multitudes on its lower parts. For how can it be that He should escape thither again, if He had not before descended from the mountain? There is something meant by the Lord’s descending from on high to feed the multitudes. He fed them, and ascended.

2. But why did He ascend after He knew that they wished to seize Him and make Him a king? How then; was He not a king, that He was afraid to be made a king? He was certainly not such a king as would be made by men, but such as would bestow a kingdom on men. May it not be that Jesus, whose deeds are words, does here, too, signify some thing to us? Therefore in this, that they wished to seize Him and make Him a king, and that for this He escapes to the mountain alone, is this action in His case silent; does it speak nothing, does it mean nothing? Or was this seizing of Him perhaps an intention to anticipate the time of His kingdom? For He had come now, not to reign immediately, as He is to reign in the sense in which we pray, Thy kingdom come. He ever reigns, indeed, with the Father, in that He is the Son of God, the Word of God, the Word by which all things were made. But the prophets foretold His kingdom according to that wherein He is Christ made man, and has made His faithful ones Christians. There will consequently be a kingdom of Christians, which at present is being gathered together, being prepared and purchased by the blood of Christ. His kingdom will at length be made manifest, when the glory of His saints shall be revealed, after the judgment is executed by Him, which judgment He Himself has said above is that which the Son of man shall execute. Of which kingdom also the apostle has said: “When He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father.”487 In reference to which also Himself says: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which is prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”488 But the disciples and the multitudes that believed on Him thought that He had thus come immediately to reign; hence, they wished to seize Him and to make Him a king; they wished to anticipate the time which He 487 1 Cor. xv. 24. 488 Matt. xxv. 34. hid with Himself, to make it known in due time, and in due time to declare it in the end of the world.

3. That ye may know that they wished to make Him a king,—that is, to anticipate, and at once to have manifest the kingdom of Christ, whom it behoved first to be judged and then to judge,—when He was crucified, and they who hoped in Him had lost hope of His resurrection, having risen from the dead, He found two of them despairingly conversing together, and, with groaning, talking with one another of what had been done; and appearing to them as a stranger, while their eyes were held that He should not be recognized by them, He mixed with them as they held discourse: but they, narrating to Him the matter of their conversation, said that He was a prophet, mighty in deeds and in words, that had been slain by the chief priests; “And we,” say they, “did hope that it was He that should have redeemed Israel.”489 Rightly you hoped: a true thing you hoped for: in Him is the redemption of Israel. But why are ye in haste? Ye wish to seize it. The following, too, shows us that this was their feeling, that, when the disciples inquired of Him concerning the end, they said to Him, “Wilt Thou at this time be made manifest, and when will be the kingdom of Israel?” For they longed for it now, they wished it now; that is, they wished to seize Him, and to make Him king. But saith He to the disciples (for He had yet to ascend alone), “It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father hath put in His own power: but ye shall receive virtue from on high, the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth.”490 You wish that I should manifest the kingdom now; let me first gather what I may manifest; you love elevation, and you shall obtain elevation, but follow me through humility. Thus it was also foretold of Him, “And the gathering of the peoples will surround Thee, and for this cause return Thou on high;”491 that is, that the gatherings of the peoples may surround Thee, that Thou mayest gather many together, return Thou on high. Thus He did; He fed men, and ascended.

4. But why is it said, He escaped? For He could not be held against His will, nor seized against His will, since He could not be recognized against His will. But that you may know that this was done mystically, not of necessity, but of express purpose, you will presently see in the following: that He appeared to the same multitudes that sought Him, said many things in speaking with them, and discoursed much about the bread of heaven; when discoursing about bread, was He not with the same people from whom He had escaped lest He should be held of them? Then, could He not have so acted at that time that He should not be seized by them, just as afterwards when He was speaking with them? Something, therefore, was meant by His escaping. What means, He escaped? His loftiness could not be 489 Luke xxiv. 13–21. 490 Acts i. 6–8. 491 Ps. vii. 8. understood. For of anything which thou hast not understood thou sayest, “It has escaped me.” Wherefore, “He escaped again unto the mountain alone,—the first-begotten from the dead, ascending above all heavens, and interceding for us.”492

5. Meanwhile, He, the one great High Priest being above (He who has entered into that within the veil, the people standing without; for Him that priest under the old law, who did this once a year, did signify): He then be ing above, what were the disciples enduring in the ship? For that ship prefigured the Church while He is on high. For if we do not, in the first place, understand this thing which that ship suffered respecting the Church, those incidents were not significant, but simply transient; but if we see the real meaning of those signs expressed in the Church, it is manifest that the actions of Christ are a kind of speeches. “But when it was late, saith he, His disciples went down to the sea; and when they had entered into a ship, they came over the sea to Capernaum.” He declared that as finished quickly, which was done afterwards,—“They came over the sea to Capernaum.” He returns to explain how they came; that they passed over by sailing across the lake. And whilst they were sailing to that place to which He has already said they had come, He explains by recapitulation what befell them. “It was now dark, and Jesus had not come to them.” Rightly he said “dark,” for the light had not come to them. “It was now dark, and Jesus had not come to them.” As the end of the world approaches, errors increase, terrors multiply, iniquity increases, infidelity increases; the light, in short, which, by the Evangelist John himself, is fully and clearly shown to be charity, so much so that he says, “Whoso hateth his brother is in darkness;”493 that light, I say, is very often extinguished; this darkness of enmity between brethren increases, daily increases, and Jesus is not yet come. How does it appear to increase? “Because iniquity will abound, and the love of many will begin to wax cold.” Darkness increases, and Jesus is not yet come. Darkness increasing, love waxing cold, iniquity abounding,—these are the waves that agitate the ship; the storms and the winds are the clamors of revilers. Thence love waxes cold; thence the waves do swell, and the ship is tossed.

6. “And a great wind blowing, the sea rose.” Darkness was increasing, discernment was diminishing, iniquity was growing. “When, therefore, they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty furlongs.” Meanwhile they struggled onward, kept advancing; nor did those winds and storms, and waves and darkness effect either that the ship should not make way, or that it should break in pieces and founder; but amid all these evils it went on. For, notwithstanding iniquity abounds, and the love of many waxes cold, and the waves do swell, the darkness grows and the wind rages, yet the ship is moving forward; “for he that perseveres to the end, the same shall be saved.”494 Nor is that number of furlongs to be lightly regarded. For it 492 Col. i. 18; Rom. viii. 34. 493 1 John ii. 11. 494 Matt. xxiv. 12. cannot really be that nothing is meant, when it is said that, “when they had rowed twentyfive or thirty furlongs, Jesus came to them.” It were enough to say, “twenty-five,” so likewise “thirty;” especially as it was an estimate, not an assertion of the narrator. Could the truth be aught endangered by a mere estimate, if he had said nearly thirty furlongs, or nearly twenty-five furlongs? But from twenty-five he made thirty. Let us examine the number twenty-five. Of what does it consist? of what is it made up? Of the quinary, or number five. That number five pertains to the law. The same are the five books of Moses, the same are those five porches containing the sick folk, the same are the five loaves feeding the five thousand men. Accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the law, because five by five—that is, five times five—make twenty-five, or the number five squared. But this law lacked perfection before the gospel came. Moreover, perfection is comprised in the number six. Therefore in six days God finished, or perfected, the world, and the same five are multiplied by six, that the law may be completed by the gospel, that six times five become thirty. To them that fulfill the law, therefore, Jesus comes. And how does He come? Walking upon the waves, keeping all the swellings of the world under His feet, pressing down all its heights. Thus it goes on, so long as time endures, so long as the ages roll. Tribulations increase, calamities increase, sorrows increase, all these swell and mount up: Jesus passeth on treading upon the waves.

7. And yet so great are the tribulations, that even they who have trusted in Jesus, and who strive to persevere unto the end, greatly fear lest they fail; while Christ is treading the waves, and trampling down the world’s ambitions and heights, the Christian is sorely afraid. Were not these things foretold him? Justly “they were afraid,” too, at seeing Jesus walking on the waves; like as Christians, though having hope in the world to come, are frequently disquieted at the crash of human affairs, when they see the loftiness of this world trampled down. They open the Gospel, they open the Scriptures, and they find all these things there foretold; that this is the Lord’s doing. He tramples down the heights of the world, that He may be glorified by the humble. Concerning whose loftiness it is foretold: “Thou shalt destroy strongest cities,” and “the spears of the enemy have come to an end, and Thou hast destroyed cities.” 495 Why then are ye afraid, O Christians? Christ speaks: “It is I; be not afraid.” Why are ye alarmed at these things? Why are ye afraid? I have foretold these things, I do them, they must necessarily be done. “It is I; be not afraid. Therefore they would receive Him into the ship.” Recognizing Him and rejoicing, they are freed from their fears. “And immediately the ship was at the land to which they went.” There is an end made at the land; from the watery to the solid, from the agitated to the firm, from the way to the goal.

8. “On the next day the multitude that stood on the other side of the sea,” whence the disciples had come, “saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto His 495 Ps. ix. 7. disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone; but there came other boats from Tiberias, nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, giving thanks to the Lord: when, therefore, the multitudes saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus.” Yet they got some knowledge of so great a miracle. For they saw that the disciples had gone into the ship alone, and that there was not another ship there. But there came boats also from near to that place where they did eat bread; in these the multitudes followed Him. He had not then embarked with His disciples, and there was not another ship there. How, then, was Jesus on a sudden beyond the sea, unless that He walked upon the sea to show a miracle?

9. “And when the multitudes had found Him.” Behold, He presents Himself to the people from whom He had escaped into the mountain, afraid that He should be taken of them by force. In every way He proves to us and gives us to know that all these things are said in a mystery, and done in a great sacrament (or mystery) to signify something important. Behold, that is He who had escaped the crowds unto the mountain; is He not speaking with the same crowds? Let them hold Him now; let them now make Him a king. “And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said unto Him, Rabbi, when camest Thou hither?”

10. After the sacrament of the miracle, He introduces discourse, that, if possible, they who have been fed may be further fed, that He may with discourse fill their minds, whose bellies He filled with the loaves, provided they take in. And if they do not, let that be taken up which they do not receive, that the fragments may not be lost. Wherefore let Him speak, and let us hear. “Jesus answered and said Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye seek me, not because ye saw the signs, but because ye have eaten of my loaves.” Ye seek me for the sake of the flesh not for the sake of the spirit. How many seek Jesus for no other object but that He may bestow on them a temporal benefit! One has a business on hand, he seeks the intercession of the clergy; another is oppressed by one more powerful than himself, he flies to the church. Another desires intervention in his behalf with one with whom he has little influence. One in this way, one in that, the church is daily filled with such people. Jesus is scarcely sought after for Jesus’ sake. “Ye seek me, not because ye have seen the signs, but because ye have eaten of my loaves. Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto eternal life.” Ye seek me for something else, seek me for my own sake. For He insinuates the truth, that Himself is that meat: this shines out clearly in the sequel. “Which the Son of man will give you.” Thou didst expect, I believe, again to eat bread, again to sit down, again to be gorged. But He had said, “Not the meat which perisheth, but that which endureth unto eternal life,” in the same manner as it was said to that Samaritan woman: “If thou knewest who it is that asketh of thee drink, thou wouldest perhaps have asked of Him, and He would give thee living water.” When she said, “Whence hast thou, since thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep?” He answered the Samaritan woman: “If thou knewest who it is that asketh of thee drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would give thee water, whereof whoso drinketh shall thirst no more; for whoso drinketh of this water shall thirst again.” And she was glad and would receive, as if no more to suffer thirst of body, being wearied with the labor of drawing water. And so, during a conversation of this kind, He comes to spiritual drink. Entirely in this manner also here.

11. Therefore “this meat, not that which perisheth, but that which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you; for Him hath God the Father sealed.” Do not take this Son of man as you take other sons of men, of whom it is said, “And the sons of men will trust in the protection of Thy wings.”496 This Son of man is separated by a certain grace of the spirit; Son of man according to the flesh, taken out from the number of men: He is the Son of man. This Son of man is also the Son of God; this man is even God. In another place, when questioning His disciples, He saith: “Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? And they answered, Some John, some Elias, some Jeremias, or one of the prophets. And He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answered, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”497 He declared Himself Son of man, Peter declared Him the Son of the living God. Most fitly did He mention that which in mercy He had manifested Himself to be; most fitly did the other mention that which He continues to be in glory. The Word of God commends to our attention His own humility: the man acknowledged the glory of his Lord. And indeed, brethren, I think that this is just. He humbled Himself for us, let us glorify Him. For not for Himself is He Son of man, but for us. Therefore was He Son of man in that way, when “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” For to that end “God the Father sealed Him.” What is to seal, but to put some particular mark? To seal is to impress some mark which cannot be confounded with the rest. To seal is to put a mark on a thing. When thou puttest a mark on anything, thou doest so lest it might be confused with other things, and thou shouldst not be able to recognize it. “The Father,” then, “hath sealed Him.” What is that, “hath sealed”? Bestowed on Him something peculiar, which puts Him out of comparison with all other men. For that reason it is said of Him, “God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.”498 What is it then to seal, but to have Him excepted? This is the import of “above Thy fellows.” And so, do not, saith He, despise me because I am the Son of man, but seek from me, “not the meat that perisheth, but that which endureth to eternal life.” For I am the Son of man in such manner as not to be one of you: I am Son of man in such manner that God the Father sealed me. What does that mean, He “sealed me”? Gave me something peculiarly my 496 Ps. xxxvi. 7. 497 Matt. xvi. 13–16. 498 Ps. xlv. 8. own, that I should not be confounded with mankind, but that mankind should be delivered by me.

12. “They said therefore unto Him, What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” For He had said to them, “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto eternal life.” “What shall we do?” they ask; by observing what, shall we be able to fulfill this precept? “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He has sent.” This is then to eat the meat, not that which perisheth, but that which endureth unto eternal life. To what purpose dost thou make ready teeth and stomach? Believe, and thou hast eaten already. Faith is indeed distinguished from works, even as the apostle says, “that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law:”499 there are works which appear good, without faith in Christ; but they are not good, because they are not referred to that end in which works are good; “for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”500 For that reason, He willeth not to distinguish faith from work, but declared faith itself to be work. For it is that same faith that worketh by love.501 Nor did He say, This is your work; but, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He has sent;” so that he who glories, may glory in the Lord. And because He invited them to faith, they, on the other hand, were still asking for signs by which they might believe. See if the Jews do not ask for signs. “They said therefore unto Him, What sign doest thou, that we may see and believe thee? what dost thou work?” Was it a trifle that they were fed with five loaves? They knew this indeed, but they preferred manna from heaven to this food. But the Lord Jesus declared Himself to be such an one, that He was superior to Moses. For Moses dared not say of himself that ge gave, “not the meat which perisheth, but that which endureth to eternal life.” Jesus promised something greater than Moses gave. By Moses indeed was promised a kingdom, and a land flowing with milk and honey, temporal peace, abundance of children, health of body, and all other things, temporal goods indeed, yet in figure spiritual; because in the Old Testament they were promised to the old man. They considered therefore the things promised by Moses, and they considered the things promised by Christ. The former promised a full belly on the earth, but of the meat which perisheth; the latter promised, “not the meat which perisheth, but that which endureth unto eternal life.” They gave attention to Him that promised the more, but just as if they did not yet see Him do greater things. They considered therefore what sort of works 499 Rom. iii. 28. 500 Rom. x. 4. 501 Gal. v. 6. Moses had done, and they wished yet some greater works to be done by Him who promised them such great things. What, say they, doest thou, that we may believe thee? And that thou mayest know that they compared those former miracles with this and so judged these miracles which Jesus did as being less; “Our fathers,” say they, “did eat manna in the wilderness.” But what is manna? Perhaps ye despise it. “As it is written, He gave them manna to eat.” By Moses our fathers received bread from heaven, and Moses did not say to them, “Labor for the meat which perisheth not.” Thou promisest “meat which perisheth not, but which endureth to eternal life;” and yet thou workest not such works as Moses did. He gave, not barley loaves, but manna from heaven.

13. “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, not Moses gave you bread from heaven, but my Father gave you bread from heaven. For the true bread is He that cometh down from heaven, and giveth life to the world.” The true bread then is He that giveth life to the world; and the same is the meat of which I have spoken a little before,—“ Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto eternal life.” Therefore, both that manna signified this meat, and all those signs were signs of me. Ye have longed for signs of me; do ye despise Him that was signified? Not Moses then gave bread from heaven: God gives bread. But what bread? Manna, perhaps? No, but the bread which manna signified, namely, the Lord Jesus Himself. My Father giveth you the true bread. “For the bread of God is He that cometh down from heaven, and giveth life to the world. Then said they unto Him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.” Like that Samaritan woman, to whom it was said, “Whoso drinketh of this water shall never thirst.” She, immediately understanding it in reference to the body, and wishing to be rid of want, said, “Give me, O Lord, of this water;” in the same manner also these said, “O Lord, give us this bread;” which may refresh us, and yet not fail.

14. “And Jesus said unto them, I am the Bread of Life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” “He that cometh to me;” this is the same thing as “He that believeth on me;” and “shall never hunger” is to be understood to mean the same thing as “shall never thirst.” For by both is signified that eternal sufficiency in which there is no want. You desire bread from heaven; you have it before you, and yet you do not eat. “But I said unto you, that ye also have seen me, and ye believed not.” But I have not on that account lost my people. “For hath your unbelief made the faith of God of none effect?”502 For, see thou what follows: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me, I will not cast out of doors.” What kind of within is that, whence there is no going out of doors? Noble interior, sweet retreat! O secret dwelling without weariness, without the bitterness of evil thoughts, without the solicitings of temptations and 502 Rom. iii. 3. the interruptions of griefs! Is it not that secret dwelling whither shall enter that well-deserving servant, to whom the Lord will say, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord?”503

15. “And him that will come to me, I will not cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” Is it for that reason that Thou wilt not cast out him that shall come unto Thee, because Thou hast descended from heaven, not to do Thine own will, but the will of Him that sent Thee? Great mystery! I beseech you, let us knock together; something may come forth to us which may feed us, according to that which has delighted us. That great and sweet secret dwelling-place: “He that will come to me.” Give heed, give heed, and weigh the matter: “He that will come unto me, I will not cast out.” Why? “Because I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” Is it then the very reason why Thou castest not out him that cometh unto Thee, that Thou camest down from heaven, not to do Thy own will, but the will of Him that sent Thee? The very reason. Why do we ask whether it be the same? The same it is; Himself says it. For it would not be right in us to suspect Him to mean other than He says, “Whoso will come to me, I will not cast out.” And, as if thou askedst, wherefore? He answered, “Because I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” I am afraid that the reason why the soul went forth away from God is, that it was proud; nay, I do not doubt it. For it is written, “Pride is the beginning of all sin; and the beginning of man’s pride is a falling away from God.” It is written, it is firm and sure, it is true. And hence what is said of proud mortal man, clad in the tattered rags of the flesh, weighed down with the weight of a corruptible body, and withal extolling himself, and forgetting with what skin-coat he is clothed,—what, I ask, saith the Scripture to him? “Why is dust and ashes proud?” Why proud! Let the Scripture tell why. “Because in his life he put forth his inmost parts.” 504 What is “put forth,” but “threw afar off”? This is to go forth away. For to enter within, is to long after the inmost parts; to put forth the inmost parts, is to go forth away. The proud man puts forth the inmost parts, the humble man earnestly desires the inmost parts. If we are cast out by pride, let us return by humility.

16. Pride is the source of all diseases, because pride is the source of all sins. When a physician removes a disorder from the body, if he merely cures the malady produced by some particular cause, but not the cause itself, he seems to heal the patient for a time, but while the cause remains, the disease will repeat itself. For example, to speak of this more expressly, some humor in the body produces a scurf or sores; there follows a high fever, and not a little pain; certain remedies are applied to repress the scurf, and to allay that heat of the sore; the remedies are applied, and they do good; thou seest the man who was full of sores and scurf healed; but because that humor was not expelled, it returns again to ulcers. 503 Matt. xxv. 23. 504 Ecclus. x. 14, 15. The physician, perceiving this, purges away the humor, removes the cause, and there will be no more sores. Whence doth iniquity abound? From pride. Cure pride and there will be no more iniquity. Consequently, that the cause of all diseases might be cured, namely, pride, the Son of God came down and was made low. Why art thou proud, O man? God, for thee, became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man; at any rate, imitate the lowly God. The Son of God came in the character of a man and was made low. Thou art taught to become humble, not of a man to become a brute. He, being God, became man; do thou, O man, recognize that thou art man. Thy whole humility is to know thyself. Therefore because God teaches humility, He said, “I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” For this is the commendation of humility. Whereas pride doeth its own will, humility doeth the will of God. Therefore, “Whoso cometh to me, I will not cast him out.” Why? “Because I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” I came humble, I came to teach humility, I came a master of humility: he that cometh to me is made one body with me; he that cometh to me becomes humble; he who adhereth to me will be humble, because he doeth not his own will, but the will of God; and therefore he shall not be cast out, for when he was proud he was cast out.

17. See those inner things commended to us in the psalm: “But the sons of men will put their trust in the covering of Thy wings.” See what it is to enter within; see what it is to flee for refuge to His protection; see what it is to run even under the Father’s lash, for He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. “But the sons of men shall put their trust under the cover of Thy wings.” What is within? “They shall be filled with the plenteousness of Thy house,” when Thou shalt have sent them within, entering into the joy of their Lord; “they shall be filled with the plenteousness of Thy house; and Thou shalt give them to drink of the stream of Thy pleasure. For with Thee is the fountain of life.” Not away without Thee, but within with Thee, is the fountain of life. “And in Thy light we shall see light. Show Thy mercy upon them that know Thee, and Thy righteousness to them that are of upright heart.” They who follow the will of their Lord, not seeking their own, but the things of the Lord Jesus Christ, they are the upright in heart, their feet shall not be moved. For “God is good to Israel, to the upright in heart. But, as for me, says he, my feet were almost moved.” Why? “Because I was jealous at sinners, looking at the peace of sinners.”505 To whom is God good then, unless to the upright in heart? For God was displeasing to me when my heart was crooked. Why displeasing? Because He gave happiness to the wicked, and therefore my feet tottered, as if I had served God in vain. For this reason, then, my feet were almost moved, because I was not upright of heart. What then is upright in heart? Following the will of God. One man is prosperous, another man toils; the one lives wickedly and yet is prosperous, the other lives rightly and is distressed. Let not him that lives rightly and is in distress be angry; 505 Ps. lxxiii. 1, 2. he has within what the prosperous man has not: let him therefore not be saddened, nor vex himself, nor faint. That prosperous man has gold in his own chest; this other has God in his conscience. Compare now gold and God, chest and conscience. The former has that which perishes, and has it where it will perish; the latter has God, who cannot perish, and has Him there whence He cannot be taken away: only if he is upright in heart; for then He enters within and goeth not out. For that reason, what said he? “For with Thee is the fountain of life:” not with us. We must therefore enter within, that we may live; we must not be, as it were, content to perish, nor willing to be satisfied of our own, to be dried up, but we must put our mouth to the very fountain, where the water fails not. Because Adam wished to live by his own counsel, he, too, fell through him who had fallen before through pride, who invited him to drink of the cup of his own pride. Wherefore, because “with Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light we shall see light,” let us drink within, let us see within. Why was there a going out thence? Hear why: “Let not the foot of pride come to me.” Therefore he, to whom the foot of pride came, went out. Show that therefore he went out. “And let not the hands of sinners move me;” because of the foot of pride. Why sayest thou this? “They are fallen, all they that work iniquity.” Where are they fallen? In their very pride. “They were driven out, and they could not stand.”506 If, then, pride drove them out who were not able to stand, humility sends them in who can stand for ever. For this reason, moreover, he who said, “The bones that were brought low shall rejoice,”507 said before, “Thou shalt give joy and gladness to my hearing.” What does he mean by, “to my hearing”? By hearing Thee I am happy; because of Thy voice I am happy; by drinking within I am happy. Therefore do I not fall; therefore “the bones that were brought low will rejoice;” therefore “the friend of the Bridegroom standeth and heareth Him;” therefore he stands, because he hears. He drinks of the fountain within, therefore he stands. They who willed not to drink of the fountain within, “there are they fallen: they were driven, they were not able to stand.”

18. Thus, the teacher of humility came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him. Let us come to Him, enter in unto Him, be ingrafted into Him, that we may not be doing our own will, but the will of God: and He will not cast us out, because we are His members, because He willed to be our head by teaching us humility. Finally, hear Himself discoursing: “Come unto me, ye who labor and are heavy laden: take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart:” and when ye have learned this, “ye shall find rest for your souls,”508 from which ye cannot be cast out; “because I am come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me;” I teach humility; none but the humble can come unto me. Only pride casteth out; how can he go out who 506 Ps. xxxvi. 8–13. 507 Ps. li. 10. 508 Matt. xi. 28, 29. keeps humility and falls not away from the truth? So much as could be said about the hidden sense has now been said, brethren: this sense is hidden enough, and I know not whether I have drawn out and shaped in suitable words for you, why it is that He casteth not out him that cometh unto Him; because He came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him.

19. “And this,” saith He, “is the will of the Father that sent, that of all that He hath given me I should lose nothing.” He that keeps humility was given to Him; the same He receives: he that keeps not humility is far from the Master of humility. “That of all which He hath given me, I should lose nothing.” “So it is not the will of your Father that one of these little ones should perish.” Of the proud, there may perish; but of the little ones, none perisheth; because, “if ye will not become as this little one, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” “Of all that the Father hath given me, I should lose nothing, but I will raise it up again on the last day.” See how here He delineates that twofold resurrection. “He that cometh unto me” immediately rises again, being made humble in my members; but I will raise him up again on the last day also according to the flesh. “For this is the will of my Father that sent me, that every one who seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day.” He said above, “Whoso heareth my word, and believeth Him that sent me:” but now, “Whoso seeth the Son, and believeth on Him.” He has not said, seeth the Son, and believeth on the Father; for to believe on the Son is the same thing as to believe on the Father. Because, “even as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given also to the Son to have life in Himself. That every one who seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have eternal life:” by believing and by passing unto life, just as by that first resurrection. And, because that is not the only resurrection, He saith, “And I will raise him up at the last day.”

1. When our Lord Jesus Christ, as we have heard in the Gospel when it was read, had said that He was Himself the bread which came down from heaven, the Jews murmured and said, “Is not Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?” These Jews were far off from the bread of heaven, and knew not how to hunger after it. They had the jaws of their heart languid; with open ears they were deaf, they saw and stood blind. This bread, indeed, requires the hunger of the inner man: and hence He saith in another place, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”509 But the Apostle Paul says that Christ is for us righteousness.510 And, consequently, he that hungers after this bread, hungers after righteousness,—that righteousness however which cometh down from heaven, the righteousness that God gives, not that which man works for himself. For if man were not making a righteousness for himself, the same apostle would not have said of the Jews: “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and wishing to establish their own righteousness, they are not subject to the righteousness of God.” 511 Of such were these who understood not the bread that cometh down from heaven; because being satisfied with their own righteousness, they hungered not after the righteousness of God. What is this, God’s righteousness and man’s righteousness? God’s righteousness here means, not that wherein God is righteous, but that which God bestows on man, that man may be righteous through God. But again, what was the righteousness of those Jews? A righteousness wrought of their own strength on which they presumed, and so declared themselves as if they were fulfillers of the law by their own virtue. But no man fulfills the law but he whom grace assists, that is, whom the bread that cometh down from heaven assists. “For the fulfilling of the law,” as the apostle says in brief, “is charity.”512 Charity, that is, love, not of money, but of God; love, not of earth nor of heaven, but of Him who made Heaven and earth. Whence can man have that love? Let us hear the same: “The love of God,” saith he, “is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us.”513 Wherefore, the Lord, about to give the Holy Spirit, said that Himself was the bread that came down from heaven, exhorting us to believe on Him. For to believe on Him is to eat the living bread. He that believes eats; he is sated invis- 509 Matt. v. 6. 510 1 Cor. i. 30. 511 Rom. x. 3. 512 Rom. xiii. 10. 513 Rom. v. 5. ibly, because invisibly is he born again. A babe within, a new man within. Where he is made new, there he is satisfied with food.

2. What then did the Lord answer to such murmurers? “Murmur not among yourselves.” As if He said, I know why ye are not hungry, and do not understand nor seek after this bread. “Murmur not among yourselves: no man can come unto me, except the Father that sent me draw him.” Noble excellence of grace! No man comes unless drawn. There is whom He draws, and there is whom He draws not; why He draws one and draws not another, do not desire to judge, if thou desirest not to err. Accept it at once and then understand; thou art not yet drawn? Pray that thou mayest be drawn. What do we say here, brethren? If we are “drawn” to Christ, it follows that we believe against our will; so then is force applied, not the will moved. A man can come to Church unwillingly, can approach the altar unwillingly, partake of the sacrament unwillingly: but he cannot believe unless he is willing. If we believed with the body, men might be made to believe against their will. But believing is not a thing done with the body. Hear the apostle: “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” And what follows? “And with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”514 That confession springs from the root of the heart. Sometimes thou hearest a man confessing, and knowest not whether he believes. But thou oughtest not to call him one confessing, if thou shouldest judge him to be one not believing. For to confess is this, to utter the thing that thou hast in thy heart: if thou hast one thing in thy heart, and another thing on thy tongue, thou art speaking, not confessing. Since, then, with the heart man believeth on Christ, which no man assuredly does against his will, and since he that is drawn seems to be as if forced against his will, how are we to solve this question, “No man cometh unto me, except the Father that sent me draw him”?

3. If he is drawn, saith some one, he comes unwillingly. If he comes unwillingly, then he believes not; but if he believes not, neither does he come. For we do not run to Christ on foot, but by believing; nor is it by a motion of the body, but by the inclination of the heart that we draw nigh to Him. This is why that woman who touched the hem of His garment touched Him more than did the crowd that pressed Him. Therefore the Lord said, “Who touched me?” And the disciples wondering said, “The multitude throng Thee, and press Thee, and sayest Thou, Who touched me?”515 And He repeated it, “Somebody hath touched me.” That woman touched, the multitude pressed. What is “touched,” except “believed”? Whence also He said to that woman that wished to throw herself at His feet after His resurrection: “’Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to the Father.”516 Thou thinkest me to be that alone which thou seest; “touch me not.” What is this? Thou supposest that I am that 514 Rom. x. 10. 515 Luke viii. 45. 516 John xx. 17. alone which I appear to thee: do not thus believe; that is, “touch me not for I am not yet ascended to the Father.” To thee I am not ascended, for thence I never departed. She touched Him not while He stood on the earth; how then could she touch Him while ascending to the Father? Thus, however, thus He willed Himself to be touched; thus He is touched by those by whom He is profitably touched, ascending to the Father, abiding with the Father, equal to the Father.

4. Thence also He says here, if thou turn thy attention to it, “No man cometh to me except he whom the Father shall draw.” Do not think that thou art drawn against thy will. The mind is drawn also by love. Nor ought we to be afraid, lest perchance we be censured in regard to this evangelic word of the Holy Scriptures by men who weigh words, but are far removed from things, most of all from divine things; and lest it be said to us, “How can I believe with the will if I am drawn?” I say it is not enough to be drawn by the will; thou art drawn even by delight. What is it to be drawn by delight? “Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.”517 There is a pleasure of the heart to which that bread of heaven is sweet. Moreover, if it was right in the poet to say, “Every man is drawn by his own pleasure,”518—not necessity, but pleasure; not obligation, but delight,—how much more boldly ought we to say that a man is drawn to Christ when he delights in the truth, when he delights in blessedness, delights in righteousness, delights in everlasting life, all which Christ is? Or is it the case that, while the senses of the body have their pleasures, the mind is left without pleasures of its own? If the mind has no pleasures of its own, how is it said, “The sons of men shall trust under the cover of Thy wings: they shall be well satisfied with the fullness of Thy house; and Thou shalt give them drink from the river of Thy pleasure. For with Thee is the fountain of life; and in Thy light shall we see light”?519 Give me a man that loves, and he feels what I say. Give me one that longs, one that hungers, one that is travelling in this wilderness, and thirsting and panting after the fountain of his eternal home; give such, and he knows what I say. But if I speak to the cold and indifferent, he knows not what I say. Such were those who murmured among themselves. “He whom the Father shall draw,” saith He, “cometh unto me.”

5. But what is this, “Whom the Father shall draw,” when Christ Himself draws? Why did He say, “Whom the Father shall draw”? If we must be drawn, let us be drawn by Him to whom one who loves says, “We will run after the odor of Thine ointment.”520 But let us, brethren, turn our minds to, and, as far as we can, apprehend how He would have us understand it. The Father draws to the Son those who believe on the Son, because they consider 517 Ps. xxxvii. 4. 518 Trahit sua quemque voluptas.—Virg. Ec. 2. 519 Ps. xxxvi. 8. 520 Cant. i. 3. that God is His Father. For God begat the Son equal to Himself, so that he who ponders, and in his faith feels and muses that He on whom he has believed is equal to the Father, this same is drawn of the Father to the Son. Arius believed the Son to be creature: the Father drew not him; for he that believes not the Son to be equal to the Father, considers not the Father. What sayest thou, Arius? What, O heretic, dost thou speak? What is Christ? Not very God, saith he, but one whom very God has made. The Father has not drawn thee, for thou hast not understood the Father, whose Son thou deniest: it is not the Son Himself but something else that thou art thinking of. Thou art neither drawn by the Father nor drawn to the Son; for the Son is very different from what thou sayest. Photius said, “Christ is only a man, he is not also God.” The Father hath not drawn him who thus believes. One whom the Father has drawn says: “Thou art Christ, Son of the living God.” Not as a prophet, not as John, not as some great and just man, but as the only, the equal, “Thou art Christ, Son of the living God.” See that he was drawn, and drawn by the Father. “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven.”521 This revealing is itself the drawing. Thou holdest out a green twig to a sheep, and thou drawest it. Nuts are shown to a child, and he is attracted; he is drawn by what he runs to, drawn by loving it, drawn without hurt to the body, drawn by a cord of the heart. If, then, these things, which among earthly delights and pleasures are shown to them that love them, draw them, since it is true that “every man is drawn by his own pleasure,” does not Christ, revealed by the Father, draw? For what does the soul more strongly desire than the truth? For what ought it to have a greedy appetite, with which to wish that there may be within a healthy palate for judging the things that are true, unless it be to eat and drink wisdom, righteousness, truth, eternity?

6. But where will this be? There better, there more truly, there more fully. For here we can more easily hunger than be satisfied, especially if we have good hope: for “Blessed,” saith He, “are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness,” that is here; “for they shall be filled,” that is there. Therefore when He had said, “No man cometh unto me except the Father that sent me draw him,” what did He subjoin? “And I will raise him up in the last day.” I render unto him what he loves, what he hopes for: he will see what, not as yet by seeing, he has believed; he shall eat that which he hungers after; he shall be filled with that which he thirsts after. Where? In the resurrection of the dead; for “I will raise him up on the last day.”

7. For it is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught of God.” Why have I said this, O Jews? The Father has not taught you; how can ye know me? For all the men of that kingdom shall be taught of God, not learn from men. And though they do learn from men, yet what they understand is given them within, flashes within, is revealed within. What 521 Matt. xvi. 16, 17. do men that proclaim tidings from without? What am I doing even now while I speak? I am pouring a clatter of words into your ears. What is that that I say or that I speak, unless He that is within reveal it? Without is the planter of the tree, within is the tree’s Creator. He that planteth and He that watereth work from without: this is what we do. But “neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.”522 That is, “they shall be all taught of God.” All who? “Every one who has heard and learned of the Father cometh unto me.” See how the Father draws: He delights by teaching, not by imposing a necessity. Behold how He draws: “They shall be all taught of God.” This is God’s drawing. “Every man that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.” This is God’s drawing.

8. What then, brethren? If every man who has heard and learned of the Father, the same cometh unto Christ, has Christ taught nothing here? What shall we say to this, that men who have not seen the Father as their teacher have seen the Son? The Son spake, but the Father taught. I, being a man, whom do I teach? Whom, brethren, but him who has heard my word? If I, being a man, do teach him who hears my word, the Father also teacheth him who hears His word. And if the Father teacheth him that hears His word, ask what Christ is, and thou wilt find the word of the Father. “In the beginning was the Word.” Not in the beginning God made the Word, just as “in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.”523 Behold how that He is not a creature. Learn to be drawn to the Son by the Father: that the Father may teach thee, hear His Word. What Word of Him, sayest thou, do I hear? “In the beginning was the Word” (it is not “was made,” but “was”), “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” How can men abiding in the flesh hear such a Word? “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

9. He Himself explains this also, and shows us His meaning when He said, “He that hath heard and learned of the Father cometh unto me.” He forthwith subjoined what we were able to conceive: “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he who is of God, he hath seen the Father.” What is that which He saith? I have seen the Father, you have not seen the Father; and yet ye come not unto me unless ye are drawn by the Father. And what is it for you to be drawn by the Father but to learn of the Father? What is to learn of the Father but to hear of the Father? What is to hear of the Father but to hear the Word of the Father—that is, to hear me? In case, therefore, when I say to you, “Every man that hath heard and learned of the Father,” you should say within yourselves, But we have never seen the Father, how could we learn of the Father? hear from myself: “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save He who is of God, He hath seen the Father.” I know the Father, I am from Him; but in that manner in which the Word is from Him where the Word is, not that 522 1 Cor. iii. 7. 523 Gen. i. 1. which sounds and passes away, but that which remains with the speaker and attracts the hearer.

10. Let what follows admonish us: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath eternal life.” He willed to reveal Himself, what He was: He might have said in brief, He that believeth on me hath me. For Christ is Himself true God and eternal life. Therefore, he that believeth on me, saith He, goeth into me; and he that goeth into me, hath me. But what is the meaning of “to have me”? To have eternal life. Eternal life took death upon itself; eternal life willed to die; but of thee, not of itself; of thee it received that whereby it may die in thy behalf. Of men, indeed, He took flesh, but yet not in the manner of men. For having His Father in heaven, He chose a mother on earth; both there begotten without mother, and here born without father. Accordingly, life took upon itself death, that life might slay death. “For he that believeth on me,” saith He, “hath eternal life:” not what is open, but what is hid. For eternal life is the Word, that “in the beginning was with God, and the Word was God, and the life was the light of men.” The same eternal life gave eternal life also to the flesh which it assumed. He came to die; but on the third day He rose again. Between the Word taking flesh and the flesh rising again, death which came between was consumed.

11. “I am,” saith He, “the bread of life.” And what was the source of their pride? “Your fathers,” saith He, “did eat manha in the wilderness, and are dead.” What is it whereof ye are proud? “They ate manna, and are dead.” Why they ate and are dead? Because they believed that which they saw; what they saw not, they did not understand. Therefore were they “your” fathers, because you are like them. For so far, my brethren, as relates to this visible corporeal death, do not we too die who eat the bread that cometh down from heaven? They died just as we shall die, so far, as I said, as relates to the visible and carnal death of this body. But so far as relates to that death, concerning which the Lord warns us by fear, and in which their fathers died: Moses ate manna, Aaron ate manna, Phinehas ate manna, and many ate manna, who were pleasing to the Lord, and they are not dead. Why? Because they understood the visible food spiritually, hungered spiritually, tasted spiritually, that they might be filled spiritually. For even we at this day receive visible food: but the sacrament is one thing, the virtue of the sacrament another. How many do receive at the altar and die, and die indeed by receiving? Whence the apostle saith, “Eateth and drinketh judgment to himself.”524 For it was not the mouthful given by the Lord that was the poison to Judas. And yet he took it; and when he took it, the enemy entered into him: not because he received an evil thing, but because he being evil received a good thing in an evil way. See ye then, brethren, that ye eat the heavenly bread in a spiritual sense; bring innocence to the altar. Though your sins are daily, at least let them not be deadly. Before ye approach the altar, consider well what ye are to say: “Forgive us our debts, even as we forgive our debtors.”525 Thou forgivest, it shall be 524 1 Cor. xi. 29. 525 Matt. vi. 12. forgiven thee: approach in peace, it is bread, not poison. But see whether thou forgivest; for if thou dost not forgive, thou liest, and liest to Him whom thou canst not deceive. Thou canst lie to God, but thou canst not deceive God. He knows what thou doest. He sees thee within, examines thee within, inspects within, judges within, and within He either condemns or crowns. But the fathers of these Jews were evil fathers of evil sons, unbelieving fathers of unbelieving sons, murmuring fathers of murmurers. For in no other thing is that people said to have offended the Lord more than in murmuring against God. And for that reason, the Lord, willing to show those men to be the children of such murmurers, thus begins His address to them: “Why murmur ye among yourselves,” ye murmurers, children of murmurers? Your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; not because manna was an evil thing, but because they ate it in an evil manner.

12. “This is the bread which cometh down from heaven.” Manna signified this bread; God’s altar signified this bread. Those were sacraments. In the signs they were diverse; in the thing which was signified they were alike. Hear the apostle: “For I would not that ye should be ignorant, brethren,” saith he, “that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat.” Of course, the same spiritual meat; for corporally it was another: since they ate manna, we eat another thing; but the spiritual was the same as that which we eat. But “our” fathers, not the fathers of those Jews; those to whom we are like, not those to whom they were like. Moreover he adds: “And did all drink the same spiritual drink.” They one kind of drink, we another, but only in the visible form, which, however, signified the same thing in its spiritual virtue. For how was it that they drank the “same drink”? “They drank,” saith he “of the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.”526 Thence the bread, thence the drink. The rock was Christ in sign; the real Christ is in the Word and in flesh. And how did they drink? The rock was smitten twice with a rod; the double smiting signified the two wooden beams of the cross. “This, then, is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that if any man eat thereof, he shall not die.” But this is what belongs to the virtue of the sacrament, not to the visible sacrament; he that eateth within, not without; who eateth in his heart, not who presses with his teeth.

13. “I am the living bread, which came down from heaven.” For that reason “living,” because I came down from heaven. The manna also came down from heaven; but the manna was only a shadow, this is the truth. “If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” When did flesh comprehend this flesh which He called bread? That is called flesh which flesh does not comprehend, and for that reason all the more flesh does not comprehend it, that it is called flesh. For they were terrified at this: they said it was too much for them; they thought it impossible. “Is my 526 1 Cor. x. 1–4. flesh,” saith He, “for the life of the world.” Believers know the body of Christ, if they neglect not to be the body of Christ. Let them become the body of Christ, if they wish to live by the Spirit of Christ. None lives by the Spirit of Christ but the body of Christ. Understand, my brethren, what I mean to say. Thou art a man; thou hast both a spirit and a body. I call that a spirit which is called the soul; that whereby it consists that thou art a man, for thou consistest of soul and body. And so thou hast an invisible spirit and a visible body. Tell me which lives of the other: does thy spirit live of thy body, or thy body of thy spirit? Every man that lives can answer; and he that cannot answer this, I know not whether he lives: what doth every man that lives answer? My body, of course, lives by my spirit. Wouldst thou then also live by the Spirit of Christ. Be in the body of Christ. For surely my body does not live by thy spirit. My body lives by my spirit, and thy body by thy spirit. The body of Christ cannot live but by the Spirit of Christ. It is for this that the Apostle Paul, expounding this bread, says: “One bread,” saith he, “we being many are one body.”527 O mystery of piety! O sign of unity! O bond of charity! He that would live has where to live, has whence to live. Let him draw near, let him believe; let him be embodied, that he may be made to live. Let him not shrink from the compact of members; let him not be a rotten member that deserves to be cut off; let him not be a deformed member whereof to be ashamed; let him be a fair, fit, and sound member; let him cleave to the body, live for God by God: now let him labor on earth, that hereafter he may reign in heaven.

14. The Jews, therefore, strove among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They strove, and that among themselves, since they understood not, neither wished to take the bread of concord: “for they who eat such bread do not strive with one another; for we being many are one bread, one body.” And by this bread, “God makes people of one sort to dwell in a house.”528

15. But that which they ask, while striving among themselves, namely, how the Lord can give His flesh to be eaten, they do not immediately hear: but further it is said to them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye will have no life in you.” How, indeed, it may be eaten, and what may be the mode of eating this bread, ye are ignorant of; nevertheless, “except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye will not have life in you.” He spoke these words, not certainly to corpses, but to living men. Whereupon, lest they, understanding it to mean this life, should strive about this thing also, He going on added, “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life.” Wherefore, he that eateth not this bread, nor drinketh this blood, hath not this life; for men can have temporal life without that, but they can noways have eternal life. He then that eateth not His flesh, nor drinketh His blood, hath no life in him; 527 1 Cor. x. 17. 528 Ps. lxviii. 6. and he that eateth His flesh, and drinketh His blood, hath life. This epithet, eternal, which He used, answers to both. It is not so in the case of that food which we take for the purpose of sustaining this temporal life. For he who will not take it shall not live, nor yet shall he who will take it live. For very many, even who have taken it, die; it may be by old age, or by disease, or by some other casualty. But in this food and drink, that is, in the body and blood of the Lord, it is not so. For both he that doth not take it hath no life, and he that doth take it hath life, and that indeed eternal life. And thus He would have this meat and drink to be understood as meaning the fellowship of His own body and members, which is the holy Church in his predestinated, and called, and justified, and glorified saints and believers. Of these, the first is already effected, namely, predestination; the second and third, that is, the vocation and justification, have taken place, are taking place, and will take place; but the fourth, namely, the glorifying, is at present in hope; but a thing future in realization. The sacrament of this thing, namely, of the unity of the body and blood of Christ, is prepared on the Lord’s table in some places daily, in some places at certain intervals of days, and from the Lord’s table it is taken, by some to life, by some to destruction: but the thing itself, of which it is the sacrament, is for every man to life, for no man to destruction, whosoever shall have been a partaker thereof.

16. But lest they should suppose that eternal life was promised in this meat and drink in such manner that they who should take it should not even now die in the body, He condescended to meet this thought; for when He had said, “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life,” He forthwith subjoined, “and I will raise him up on the last day.” That meanwhile, according to the Spirit, he may have eternal life in that rest into which the spirits of the saints are received; but as to the body, he shall not be defrauded of its eternal life, but, on the contrary, he shall have it in the resurrection of the dead at the last day.

17. “For my flesh,” saith He, “is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” For whilst by meat and drink men seek to attain to this, neither to hunger nor thirst, there is nothing that truly affords this, except this meat and drink, which doth render them by whom it is taken immortal and incorruptible; that is, the very fellowship of the saints, where will be peace and unity, full and perfect. Therefore, indeed, it is, even as men of God understood this before us, that our Lord Jesus Christ has pointed our minds to His body and blood in those things, which from being many are reduced to some one thing. For a unity is formed by many grains forming together; and another unity is effected by the clustering together of many berries.

18. In a word, He now explains how that which He speaks of comes to pass, and what it is to eat His body and to drink His blood. “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” This it is, therefore, for a man to eat that meat and to drink that drink, to dwell in Christ, and to have Christ dwelling in him. Consequently, he that dwelleth not in Christ, and in whom Christ dwelleth not, doubtless neither eateth His flesh [spiritually] nor drinketh His blood [although he may press the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ carnally and visibly with his teeth], but rather doth he eat and drink the sacrament of so great a thing to his own judgment, because he, being unclean, has presumed to come to the sacraments of Christ, which no man taketh worthily except he that is pure: of such it is said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”529

19. “As the living Father hath sent me,” saith He, “and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” He says not: As I eat the Father, and live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same shall live by me. For the Son, who was begotten equal, does not become better by participation of the Father; just as we are made better by participation of the Son, through the unity of His body and blood, which thing that eating and drinking signifies. We live then by Him, by eating Him; that is, by receiving Himself as the eternal life, which we did not have from ourselves. Himself, however, lives by the Father, being sent by Him, because “He emptied Himself, being made obedient even unto the death of the cross.”530 For if we take this declaration, “I live by the Father,”531 according to that which He says in another place, “The Father is greater than I;” just as we, too, live by Him who is greater than we; this results from His being sent. The sending is in fact the emptying of Himself, and His taking upon Him the form of a servant: and this is rightly understood, while also the Son’s equality of nature with the Father is preserved. For the Father is greater than the Son as man, but He has the Son as God equal,—whilst the same is both God and man, Son of God and Son of man, one Christ Jesus. To this effect, if these words are rightly understood, He spoke thus: “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me:” just as if He were to say, My emptying of myself (in that He sent me) effected that I should live by the Father; that is, should refer my life to Him as the greater; but that any should live by me is effected by that participation in which he eats me. Therefore, I being humbled, do live by the Father, man being raised up, liveth by me. But if it was said, “I live by the Father,” so as to mean, that He is of the Father, not the Father of Him, it was said without detriment to His equality. And yet further, by saying, “And he that eateth me, even he shall live by me,” He did not signify that His own equality was the same as our equality, but He thereby showed the grace of the Mediator.

20. “This is the bread that cometh down from heaven;” that by eating it we may live, since we cannot have eternal life from ourselves. “Not,” saith He, “as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth this bread shall live forever.” That those fathers are dead, He would have to be understood as meaning, that they do not live forever. For even 529 Matt. v. 8. 530 Phil. ii. 8. 531 Propter Patrem. they who eat Christ shall certainly die temporally; but they live forever, because Christ is eternal life.

1. We have just heard out of the Gospel the words of the Lord which follow the former discourse. From these a discourse is due to your ears and minds, and it is not unseasonable to-day; for it is concerning the body of the Lord which He said that He gave to be eaten for eternal life. And He explained the mode of this bestowal and gift of His, in what manner He gave His flesh to eat, saying, “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” The proof that a man has eaten and drank is this, if he abides and is abode in, if he dwells and is dwelt in, if he adheres so as not to be deserted. This, then, He has taught us, and admonished us in mystical words that we may be in His body, in His members under Himself as head, eating His flesh, not abandoning our unity with Him. But most of those who were present, by not understanding Him, were offended; for in hearing these things, they thought only of flesh, that which themselves were. But the apostle says, and says what is true, “To be carnally-minded is death.”532 The Lord gives us His flesh to eat, and yet to understand it according to the flesh is death; while yet He says of His flesh, that therein is eternal life. Therefore we ought not to understand the flesh carnally. As in these words that follow:

2. “Many therefore,” not of His enemies, but “of His disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” If His disciples accounted this saying hard, what must His enemies have thought? And yet so it behoved that to be said which should not be understood by all. The secret of God ought to make men eagerly attentive, not hostile. But these men quickly departed from Him, while the Lord said such things: they did not believe Him to be saying something great, and covering some grace by these words; they understood just according to their wishes, and in the manner of men, that Jesus was able, or was determined upon this, namely, to distribute the flesh with which the Word was clothed, piecemeal, as it were, to those that believe on Him. “This,” say they, “is a hard saying; who can hear it?”

3. “But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples murmured at it,”—for they so said these things with themselves that they might not be heard by Him: but He who knew them in themselves, hearing within Himself,—answered and said, “This offends you;” because I said, I give you my flesh to eat, and my blood to drink, this forsooth offends you. “Then what if ye shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before?” What is this? Did He hereby solve the question that perplexed them? Did He hereby uncover the source of their offense? He did clearly, if only they understood. For they supposed that He was going to deal out His body to them; but He said that He was to ascend into heaven, of course, whole: 532 Rom. vii. 6. “When ye shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before;” certainly then, at least, you will see that not in the manner you suppose does He dispense His body; certainly then, at least, you will understand that His grace is not consumed by tooth-biting.

4. And He said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” Before we expound this, as the Lord grants us, that other must not be negligently passed over, where He says, “Then what if ye shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before?” For Christ is the Son of man, of the Virgin Mary. Therefore Son of man He began to be here on earth, where He took flesh from the earth. For which cause it was said prophetically, “Truth is sprung from the earth.”533 Then what does He mean when He says, “When ye shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before”? For there had been no question if He had spoken thus: “If ye shall see the Son of God ascending where He was before.” But since He said, “The Son of man ascending where He was before,” surely the Son of man was not in heaven before the time when He began to have a being on earth? Here, indeed, He said, “where He was before,” just as if He were not there at this time when He spoke these words. But in another place He says, “No man has ascended into heaven but He that came down from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.”534 He said not “was,” but, saith He, “the Son of man who is in heaven.” He was speaking on earth, and He declared Himself to be in heaven. And yet He did not speak thus: “No man hath ascended into heaven but He that came down from heaven,” the Son of God, “who is in heaven.” Whither tends it, but to make us understand that which even in the former discourse I commended to your minds, my beloved, that Christ, both God and man, is one person, not two persons, lest our faith be not a trinity, but a quaternity? Christ, therefore, is one; the Word, soul and flesh, one Christ; the Son of God and Son of man, one Christ; Son of God always, Son of man in time, yet one Christ in regard to unity of person. In heaven He was when He spoke on earth. He was Son of man in heaven in that manner in which He was Son of God on earth; Son of God on earth in the flesh which He took, Son of man in heaven in the unity of person.

5. What is it, then, that He adds? “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” Let us say to Him (for He permits us, not contradicting Him, but desiring to know), O Lord, good Master, in what way does the flesh profit nothing, whilst Thou hast said, “Except a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he shall not have life in him?” Or does life profit nothing? And why are we what we are, but that we may have eternal life, which Thou dost promise by Thy flesh? Then what means “the flesh profiteth nothing”? It profiteth nothing, but only in the manner in which they understood it. They indeed understood the flesh, just as when cut to pieces in a carcass, or sold in the shambles; not as when it is quickened by the Spirit. Wherefore it is said that “the flesh profiteth nothing,” in the 533 Ps. lxxxv. 12. 534 John iii. 13. same manner as it is said that “knowledge puffeth up.” Then, ought we at once to hate knowledge? Far from it! And what means “Knowledge puffeth up”? Knowledge alone, without charity. Therefore he added, “but charity edifieth.”535 Therefore add thou to knowledge charity, and knowledge will be profitable, not by itself, but through charity. So also here, “the flesh profiteth nothing,” only when alone. Let the Spirit be added to the flesh, as charity is added to knowledge, and it profiteth very much. For if the flesh profited nothing, the Word would not be made flesh to dwell among us. If through the flesh Christ has greatly profited us, does the flesh profit nothing? But it is by the flesh that the Spirit has done somewhat for our salvation. Flesh was a vessel; consider what it held, not what it was. The apostles were sent forth; did their flesh profit us nothing? If the apostles’ flesh profited us, could it be that the Lord’s flesh should have profited us nothing? For how should the sound of the Word come to us except by the voice of the flesh? Whence should writing come to us? All these are operations of the flesh, but only when the spirit moves it, as if it were its organ. Therefore “it is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing,” as they understood the flesh, but not so do I give my flesh to be eaten.

6. Hence “the words,” saith He, “which I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” For we have said, brethren, that this is what the Lord had taught us by the eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood, that we should abide in Him and He in us. But we abide in Him when we are His members, and He abides in us when we are His temple. But that we may be His members, unity joins us together. And what but love can effect that unity should join us together? And the love of God, whence is it? Ask the apostle: “The love of God,” saith he, “is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.”536 Therefore “it is the Spirit that quickeneth,” for it is the Spirit that makes living members. Nor does the Spirit make any members to be living except such as it finds in the body, which also the Spirit itself quickens. For the Spirit which is in thee, O man, by which it consists that thou art a man, does it quicken a member which it finds separated from thy flesh? I call thy soul thy spirit. Thy soul quickeneth only the members which are in thy flesh; if thou takest one away, it is no longer quickened by thy soul, because it is not joined to the unity of thy body. These things are said to make us love unity and fear separation. For there is nothing that a Christian ought to dread so much as to be separated from Christ’s body. For if he is separated from Christ’s body, he is not a member of Christ; if he is not a member of Christ, he is not quickened by the Spirit of Christ. “But if any man,” saith the apostle, “have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.”537 “It is the Spirit,” then, “that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” What means “are spirit 535 1 Cor. viii. 1. 536 Rom. v. 5. 537 Rom. viii. 9. and life”? They are to be understood spiritually. Hast thou understood spiritually? “They are spirit and life.” Hast thou understood carnally? So also “are they spirit and life,” but are not so to thee.

7. “But,” saith He, “there are some among you that believe not.” He said not, There are some among you that understand not; but He told the cause why they understand not. “There are some among you that believe not,” and therefore they understand not, because they believe not. For the prophet has said, “If ye believe not, ye shall not understand.”538 We are united by faith, quickened by understanding. Let us first adhere to Him through faith, that there may be that which may be quickened by understanding. For he who adheres not resists; he that resists believes not. And how can he that resists be quickened? He is an adversary to the ray of light by which he should be penetrated: he turns not away his eye, but shuts his mind. “There are,” then, “some who believe not.” Let them believe and open, let them open and be illumined. “For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed, and who should betray Him.” For Judas also was there. Some indeed, were offended; but he remained to watch his opportunity, not to understand. And because he remained for that purpose, the Lord kept not silence concerning him. He described him not by name, but neither was He silent about him; that all might fear though only one should perish. But after He spoke, and distinguished those that believe from those that believe not, He clearly showed the cause why they believed not. “Therefore I said unto you,” saith He, “that no man can come unto me except it were given to him of my Father.” Hence to believe is also given to us; for certainly to believe is something. And if it is something great, rejoice that thou hast believed, yet be not lifted up; for “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?”539

8. “From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.” Went back, but after Satan, not after Christ. For our Lord Christ once addressed Peter as Satan, rather because he wished to precede his Lord, and to give counsel that He should not die, He who had come to die, that we might not die for ever; and He says to him, “Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.” 540 He did not drive him back to go after Satan, and so called him Satan; but He made him go behind Himself, that by walking after his Lord he should not be a Satan. But these went back in the same manner as the apostle says of certain women: “For some are turned back after Satan.”541 They walked not further with Him. Behold, cut off from the body, for perhaps they were not in the body, they have lost life. They must be reckoned among the unbelieving, notwithstanding they were called disciples. Not a few, but “many went back.” 538 Isa. vii. 9, LXX. 539 1 Cor. iv. 7. 540 Matt. xvi. 23. 541 1 Tim. v. 15. This happened, it may be, for our consolation. For sometimes it happens that a man may declare the truth, and that what he says may not be understood, and so they that hear it are offended and go away. Now the man regrets that he had spoken that truth, and he says to himself, “I ought not to have spoken so, I ought not to have said this.” Behold; it happened to the Lord: He spoke, and lost many; He remained with few. But yet He was not troubled, because He knew from the beginning who they were that believed and that believed not. If it happen to us, we are sorely perplexed. Let us find comfort in the Lord, and yet let us speak words with prudence.

9. And now addressing the few that remained: “Then said Jesus to the twelve” (namely, those twelve who remained), “Will ye also,” said He, “go away?” Not even Judas departed. But it was already manifest to the Lord why he remained: to us he was made manifest after- wards. Peter answered in behalf of all, one for many, unity for the collective whole: “Then Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go?” Thou drivest us from Thee; give us Thy other self. “To whom shall we go?” If we abandon Thee, to whom shall we go? “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” See how Peter, by the gift of God and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, understood Him. How other than because he believed? “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” For Thou hast eternal life in the ministration of Thy body and blood. “And we have believed and have known.” Not have known and believed, but “believed and known.” For we believed in order to know; for if we wanted to know first, and then to believe, we should not be able either to know or to believe. What have we believed and known? “That Thou art Christ, the Son of God;” that is, that Thou art that very eternal life, and that Thou givest in Thy flesh and blood only that which Thou art.

10. Then said the Lord Jesus: “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Therefore, should He have said, “I have chosen eleven:” or is a devil also chosen, and among the elect? Persons are wont to be called “elect” by way of praise: or was man elected because some great good was done by him, without his will and knowledge? This belongs peculiarly to God; the contrary is characteristic of the wicked. For as wicked men make a bad use of the good works of God; so, on the contrary, God makes a good use of the evil works of wicked men. How good it is that the members of the body are, as they can be disposed only by God, their author and framer! Nevertheless what evil use doth wantonness make of the eyes? What ill use doth falsehood make of the tongue? Does not the false witness first both slay his own soul with his tongue, and then, after he has destroyed himself, endeavor to injure another? He makes an ill use of the tongue, but the tongue is not therefore an evil thing; the tongue is God’s work, but iniquity makes an ill use of that good work of God. How do they use their feet who run into crimes? How do murderers employ their hands? And what ill use do wicked men make of those good creatures of God that lie outside of them? With gold they corrupt judgment and oppress the innocent. Bad men make a bad use of the very light; for by evil living they employ even the very light with which they see into the service of their villanies. A bad man, when going to do a bad deed, wishes the light to shine for him, lest he stumble; he who has already stumbled and fallen within; that which he is afraid of in his body has already befallen him in his heart. Hence, to avoid the tediousness of running through them separately, a bad man makes a bad use of all the good creatures of God: a good man, on the contrary, makes a good use of the evil deeds of wicked men. And what is so good as the one God? Since, indeed, the Lord Himself said, “There is none good, but the one God.”542 By how much He is better, then, by so much the better use He makes of our evil deeds. What worse than Judas? Among all that adhered to the Master, among the twelve, to him was committed the common purse; to him was allotted the dispensing for the poor. Unthankful for so great a favor, so great an honor, he took the money, and lost righteousness: being dead, he betrayed life: Him whom he followed as a disciple, he persecuted as an enemy. All this evil was Judas’s; but the Lord employed his evil for good. He endured to be betrayed, to redeem us. Behold, Judas’s evil was turned to good. How many martyrs has Satan persecuted! If Satan left off persecuting, we should not to-day be celebrating the very glorious crown of Saint Laurence. If then God employs the evil works of the devil himself for good, what the bad man effects, by making a bad use, is to hurt himself, not to contradict the goodness of God. The Master makes use of that man. And if He knew not how to make use of him, the Master contriver would not have permitted him to be. Therefore, He saith, “One of you is a devil,” whilst I have chosen you twelve. This saying, “I have chosen you twelve,” may be understood in this way, that twelve is a sacred number. For the honor of that number was not taken away because one was lost, for another was chosen into the place of the one that perished.543 The number remained a sacred number, a number containing twelve: because they were to make known the Trinity throughout the whole world, that is, throughout the four quarters of the world. That is the reason of the three times four. Judas, then only cut himself off, not profaned the number twelve: he abandoned his Teacher, for God appointed a successor to take his place.

11. All this that the Lord spoke concerning His flesh and blood;—and in the grace of that distribution He promised us eternal life, and that He meant those that eat His flesh and drink His blood to be understood, from the fact of their abiding in Him and He in them; and that they understood not who believed not; and that they were offended through their understanding spiritual things in a carnal sense; and that, while these were offended and perished, the Lord was present for the consolation of the disciples who remained, for proving whom He asked, “Will ye also go away?” that the reply of their steadfastness might be known to us, for He knew that they remained with Him;—let all this, then, avail us to this end, most beloved, that we eat not the flesh and blood of Christ merely in the sacrament, as many evil 542 Mark x. 10. 543 Acts i. 26. men do, but that we eat and drink to the participation of the Spirit, that we abide as members in the Lord’s body, to be quickened by His Spirit, and that we be not offended, even if many do now with us eat and drink the sacraments in a temporal manner, who shall in the end have eternal torments. For at present Christ’s body is as it were mixed on the threshingfloor: “But the Lord knoweth them that are His.”544 If thou knowest what thou threshest, that the substance is there hidden, that the threshing has not consumed what the winnowing has purged; certain are we, brethren, that all of us who are in the Lord’s body, and abide in Him, that He also may abide in us, have of necessity to live among evil men in this world even unto the end. I do not say among those evil men who blaspheme Christ; for there are now few found who blaspheme with the tongue, but many who do so by their life. Among those, then, we must necessarily live even unto the end.

12. But what is this that He saith: “He that abideth in me, and I in him”? What, but that which the martyrs heard: “He that persevereth unto the end, the same shall be saved”?545 How did Saint Laurence, whose feast we celebrate to-day, abide in Him? He abode even to temptation, abode even to tyrannical questioning, abode even to bitterest threatening, abode even to destruction;—that were a trifle, abode even to savage torture. For he was not put to death quickly, but tormented in the fire: he was allowed to live a long time; nay, not allowed to live a long time, but forced to die a slow, lingering death. Then, in that lingering death, in those torments, because he had well eaten and well drunk, as one who had feasted on that meat, as one intoxicated with that cup, he felt not the torments. For He was there who said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth.” For the flesh indeed was burning, but the Spirit was quickening the soul. He shrunk not back, and he mounted into the kingdom. But the holy martyr Xystus, whose day we celebrated five days ago, had said to him, “Mourn not, my son;” for Xystus was a bishop, he was a deacon. “Mourn not,” said he; “thou shall follow me after three days.” He said three days, meaning the interval between the day of Saint Xystus’s suffering and that of Saint Laurence’s suffering, which falls on to-day. Three days is the interval. What comfort! He says not, “Mourn not, my son; the persecution will cease, and thou wilt be safe;” but, “do not mourn: whither I precede thou shalt follow; nor shall thy pursuit be deferred: three days will be the interval, and thou shalt be with me.” He accepted the oracle, vanquished the devil, and attained to the triumph.

1. In this chapter of the Gospel, brethren, our Lord Jesus Christ has most especially commended Himself to our faith in respect of His humanity. For indeed He always keeps in view, both in His words and deeds, that He should be believed to be God and man: God who made us, man who sought us; with the Father, always God; with us, man in time. For He would not have sought man whom He had made if Himself had not become that which He had made. But remember this, and do not let it slip from your hearts, that Christ became man in such manner that He ceased not to be God. While remaining God, He who made man took manhood. While, therefore, as man He concealed Himself, He must not be thought to have lost His power, but only to have offered an example to our infirmity. For He was detained when He willed to be, and He was put to death when he willed to be. But since there were to be His members, that is, His faithful ones, who would not have that power which He, our God, had; by His being hid, by His con cealing Himself as if He would not be put to death, He indicated that His members would do this, in which members He Himself in fact was. For Christ is not simply in the head and not in the body, but Christ whole is in the head and body. What, therefore, His members are, that He is; but what He is, it does not necessarily follow that His members are. For if His members were not Himself, He would not have said, “Saul, why persecutest thou me?”546 For Saul was not persecuting Himself on earth, but His members, namely, His believers. He would not, however, say, my saints, my servants, or, in short, my brethren, which is more honorable; but, me, that is, my members, whose head I am.

2. With these preliminary remarks, I think that we shall not have to labor much for the meaning in this chapter; for that is often betokened in the head which was to be in the body. “After these things,” saith he, “Jesus walked in Galilee: for He would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him.” This is what I have said; He offered an example to our infirmity. He had not lost power, but He was comforting our weakness. For it would happen, as I have said, that some believer in Him would retreat into concealment, lest he should be found by the persecutors; and lest the concealment should be objected to him as a crime, that occurred first in the head, which should afterwards be confirmed in the member. For it is said, “He would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him,” just as if Christ were not able both to walk among the Jews, and not be killed by them. For He manifested this power when He willed; for when they would lay hold of Him, as He was now about to suffer, “He said to them, Whom seek ye? They answered, Jesus. Then, said He, I am He,” not concealing, but manifesting Himself. That manifestation, however, they did not with- 546 Acts ix. 4. stand, but “going backwards, they fell to the ground.”547 And yet, because He had come to suffer, they rose up, laid hold of Him, led Him away to the judge, and slew Him. But what was it they did? That which a certain scripture says: “The earth was delivered into the hands of the ungodly.”548 The flesh was given into the power of the Jews; and this that thereby the bag, as it were, might be rent asunder, whence our purchase-price might run out.

3. “Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles was at hand.” What the feast of tabernacles is, they who read the Scriptures know. They used on the holy day to make tabernacles, in likeness of the tabernacles in which they dwelt while they sojourned in the wilderness, after being led out of Egypt. This was a holy day, a great solemnity. The Jews were celebrating this, as being mindful of the Lord’s benefits—they who were about to kill the Lord. On this holy day, then (for there were several holy days; but it was called a holy day with the Jews, though it was not one day, but several), “His brethren” spoke to the Lord Christ. Understand the phrase, “His brethren,” as you know it must be taken, for it is not a new thing you hear. The blood relations of the Virgin Mary used to be called the Lord’s brethren. For it was of the usage of Scripture to call blood relations and all other near kindred by the term brethren, which is foreign to our usage, and not within our manner of speech. For who would call an uncle or a sister’s son “brother”? Yet the Scripture calls relatives of this kind “brothers.” For Abraham and Lot are called brothers, while Abraham was Lot’s uncle.549 Laban and Jacob are called brothers, while Laban was Jacob’s uncle.550 When, therefore, you hear of the Lord’s brethren, consider them the blood relations of Mary, who did not a second time bear children. For, as in the sepulchre, where the Lord’s body was laid, neither before nor after did any dead lie; so, likewise, Mary’s womb, neither before nor after conceived anything mortal.

4. We have said who the brethren were, let us hear what they said: “Pass over hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see thy work which thou doest.” The Lord’s works were not hid from the disciples, but to these men they were not apparent. They might have Christ for a kinsman, but through that very relationship they disdained to believe on Him. It is told us in the Gospel; for we dare not hold this as a mere opinion, you have just now heard it. They go on advising Him: “For no man doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly: if thou do these things, show thyself to the world.” And directly after it says: “For neither did His brethren believe in Him.” Why did they not believe in Him? Because they sought human glory. For as to what His brethren appear to advise Him, they consult for His glory. Thou doest marvellous works, make thyself known; that 547 John xviii. 6. 548 Job ix. 24. 549 Gen. xi. 27. 550 Gen. xxviii. 2. is, appear to all, that thou mayest be praised by all. The flesh spoke to the flesh; but the flesh without God, to the flesh with God. It was the wisdom of the flesh speak ing to the Word which became flesh and dwelt among us.

5. What did the Lord answer to these things? Then saith Jesus to them: “My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready.” What is this? Had not Christ’s time yet come? Why then was Christ come, if His time had not yet come? Have we not heard the apostle say, “But when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son”?551 If, therefore, He was sent in the fullness of time, He was sent when He ought to be sent, He came when it behoved that He should come. What means then, “My time is not yet come”? Understand, brethren, with what intention they spoke, when they appeared to advise Him as their brother. They were giving Him counsel to pursue glory; as advising in a worldly manner and with an earthly disposition, that He should not be unknown to fame, nor hide Himself in obscurity. This is what the Lord says in answer to those who were giving Him counsel of glory, “My time is not yet come;”—the time of my glory is not yet come. See how profound it is: they were advising Him as to glory; but He would have loftiness preceded by humility, and willed to prepare the way to elevation itself through humility. For those disciples, too, were of course seeking glory who wished to sit, one at His right hand and the other at His left: they thought only of the goal, and saw not by what way it must be reached; the Lord recalled them to the way, that they might come to their fatherland in due order. For the fatherland is on high, the way thither lies low. That land is the life of Christ, the way is Christ’s death; that land is the habitation of Christ, the way is Christ’s suffering. He that refuses the way, why seeks he the fatherland? In a word, to these also, while seeking elevation, He gave this answer: “Can ye drink the cup which I am about to drink?” 552 Behold the way by which you must come to that height which you desire. The cup He made mention of was indeed that of His humility and suffering.

6. Therefore also here: “My time is not yet come; but your time,” that is the glory of the world, “is always ready.” This is the time of which Christ, that is the body of Christ, speaks in prophecy: “When I shall have received the fit time, I will judge righteously.”553 For at present it is not the time of judging, but of tolerating the wicked. Therefore, let the body of Christ bear at present, and tolerate the wickedness of evil livers. Let it, however, have righteousness now, for by righteousness it shall come to judgment. And what saith the Holy Scripture in the psalm to the members,—namely, that tolerate the wickedness of this world? “The Lord will not cast off His people.” For, in fact, His people labors among the unworthy, among the unrighteous, among blasphemers, among murmurers, detractors, persecutors, 551 Gal. iv. 4. 552 Matt. xx. 22. 553 Ps. lxxv. 2. and, if they are allowed, destroyers. Yes, it labors; but “the Lord will not cast off His people, and He will not forsake His inheritance until justice is turned into judgment.”554 “Until the justice,” which is now in His saints, “be turned into judgment;” when that shall be fulfilled which was said to them, “Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” 555 The apostle had righteousness, but not yet that judgment of which he says, “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?”556 Be it now, therefore, the time for living rightly; the time for judging them that have lived ill shall be hereafter. “Until righteousness,” saith he, “is turned into judgment.” The time of judgment will be that of which the Lord has here said, “My time is not yet come.” For there will be a time of glory, when He who came in humility will come in loftiness; He who came to be judged will come to judge; He who came to be slain by the dead will come to judge the quick and the dead. “God,” saith the psalm, “will come manifest, our God, and He will not be silent.”557 What is “shall come manifest”? Because He came concealed. Then He will not be silent; for when He came concealed, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before its shearer, He opened not His mouth.”558 He shall come, and shall not keep silence. “I was silent,” saith He, “shall I always be silent?”559

7. But what is necessary at the present time for those who have righteousness? That which is read in that psalm: “Until righteousness is turned into judgment, and they that have it are upright of heart.” You ask, perhaps, who are the upright in heart? We find in Scripture those to be upright in heart who bear the evils of the world, and do not accuse God. See, brethren, an uncommon thing is that which I speak of. For I know not how it is that, when any evil befalls a man, he runs to accuse God, when he ought to accuse himself. When thou gettest any good, thou praisest thyself; when thou sufferest any evil, thou accusest God. This is then the crooked heart, not the upright. When thou art cured of this distorting and perversity, what thou didst use to do will be turned into the contrary. For what didst thou use to do before? Thou didst praise thyself in the good things of God, and didst accuse God in thine own evil things; with thy heart converted and made right, thou wilt praise God in His good things, and accuse thyself in thy own evil things. These are the upright in heart. In short, that man, who was not yet right in heart when the success of the wicked and the distress of the good grieved him, says, when he is corrected: “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart! But as for me,” when I was not right in heart, “my feet were almost 554 Ps. xciv. 14. 555 Matt. xix. 28. 556 1 Cor. vi. 3. 557 Ps. l. 3. 558 Isa. liii. 7. 559 Isa. xlii. 14. gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped.” Why? “Because I was envious at sinners, beholding the peace of sinners.”560 I saw, saith he, the wicked prosperous, and I was displeased at God; for I did wish that God should not permit the wicked to be happy. Let man understand: God never does permit this; but a bad man is thought to be happy, for this reason, because men are ignorant of what happiness is. Let us then be right in heart: the time of our glory is not yet come. Let it be told to the lovers of this world, such as the brethren of the Lord were, “your time is always ready;” our time “is not yet come.” For let us, too, dare to say this. And since we are the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, since we are His members, since we joyfully acknowledge our head, let us say it without hesitation; since, for our sakes, He deigned also Himself to say this. And when the lovers of this world revile us, let us say to them, “Your time is always ready; our time is not yet come.” For the apostle has said to us, “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” When will our time come? “When Christ,” saith he, “your life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.”561

8. What said He further? “The world cannot hate you.” What is this, but, The world cannot hate its lovers, the false witnesses? For you call the things that are evil, good; and the things that are good, evil. “But me it hateth, because I bear witness concerning it, that its works are evil. Go ye up to this feast.” What means “to this”? Where ye seek human glory. What means “to this”? Where ye wish to prolong carnal joys, not to meditate on eternal joys. “I go not up to this feast, because my time is not yet full come.” On this feast-day you seek human glory; but my time, that is, the time of my glory, is not yet come. That will be my feast-day, not running before and passing over these days, but remaining for ever; that will be festivity, joy without end, eternity without a blot, serenity without a cloud. “When He had said these words unto them, He abode still in Galilee. But when His brethren were gone up, then went He also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.” Therefore “not to this feast-day,” because His desire was not for temporal glory, but to teach something to profit, to correct men, to admonish them of an eternal feast-day, to turn away their love from this world, and to turn it to God. But what means this, “He went up as it were in secret to the feast”? This action of the Lord also is not without meaning. It appears to me that, even from this circumstance that He went up as it were in secret, He had intended to signify something; for the things that follow will show that He thus went up on the middle of the feast, that is, when those days were half over, to teach even openly. But he said, “As it were in secret,” meaning, not to show Himself to men. It is not without meaning that Christ went up “as it were in secret” to that feast, because He Himself lay hid in that feast-day. What I have said as yet is also under cover of secrecy. Let it be manifested then, let the veil be lifted, and let that which was secret appear.

1. What follows of the Gospel and was read to-day, we must next in order look at, and speak from it as the Lord may grant us. Yesterday it was read thus far, that although they had not seen the Lord Jesus in the temple on the feast-day, yet they were speaking about Him: “And some said, He is a good man: but others said, Nay; but he seduceth the people.” For this was said for the comfort of those who, afterwards preaching God’s word, were to be seducers, and yet true men.572 For if to seduce is to deceive, neither was Christ a seducer, nor His apostles, nor ought any Christian to be such; but if to seduce (to lead aside) is by persuading to lead one from something to something else, we ought to inquire into the whence and the whither: if from evil to good, the seducer is a good man; if from good to evil, the seducer is a bad man. In that sense, then, in which men are seduced from evil to good, would that all of us both were called, and actually were seducers!

2. Then afterwards the Lord went up to the feast, “about the middle of the feast, and taught.” “And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” He who was in secret taught, He was speaking openly and was not restrained. For that hiding of Himself was for the sake of example; this showing Himself openly was an intimation of His power. But as He taught, “the Jews marvelled;” all indeed, so far as I think, marvelled, but all were not converted. And why this wondering? Because all knew where He was born, where He had been brought up; they had never seen Him learning letters, but they heard Him disputing about the law, bringing forward testimonies of the law, which none could bring forward unless he had read, and none could read unless he had learned letters: and therefore they marvelled. But their marvelling was made an occasion to the Master of insinuating the truth more deeply into their minds. By reason, indeed of their wondering and words, the Lord said something profound, and worthy of being more diligently looked into and discussed. On account of which I would urge you, my beloved, to earnestness, not only in hearing for yourselves, but also in praying for us.

3. How then did the Lord answer those that were marvelling how He knew letters which He had not learned? “My doctrine,” saith He, “is not mine, but His that sent me.” This is the first profundity. For He seems as if in a few words He had spoken contraries. For He says not, This doctrine is not mine; but, “My doctrine is not mine.” If not Thine, how Thine? If Thine, how not Thine? For Thou sayest both: both, “my doctrines;” and, “not mine.” For if He had said, This doctrine is not mine, there would have been no question. But now, brethren, in the first place, consider well the question, and so in due order expect the solution. For he who sees not the question proposed, how can he understand what is expounded? 572 2 Cor. vi. 8. The subject of inquiry, then, is that which He says, “My, not mine” this appears to be contrary; how “my,” how “not mine”? If we carefully look at what the holy evangelist himself says in the beginning of his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;” thence hangs the solution of this question. What then is the doctrine of the Father, but the Father’s Word? Therefore, Christ Himself is the doctrine of the Father, if He is the Word of the Father. But since the Word cannot be of none, but of some one, He said both “His doctrine,” namely, Himself, and also, “not His own,” because He is the Word of the Father. For what is so much “Thine” as Thyself? And what so much not Thine as Thyself, if that Thou art is of another?

4. The Word then is God; and it is also the Word of a stable, unchangeable doctrine, not such as can be sounded by syllables and fleeting, but abiding with the Father, to which abiding doctrine let us be converted, being admonished by the transitory sounds of the voice. For that which is transitory does not so admonish us as to call us to transitory things. We are admonished to love God. All this that I have said were syllables; they smote through the air to reach your sense of hearing, and by sounding passed away: that, however, which I advise you ought not so to pass away, because He whom I exhort you to love passes not away; and when you, exhorted in transient syllables, shall have been converted, you shall not pass away, but shall abide with Him who is abiding. There is therefore in the doctrine this great matter, this deep and eternal thing which is permanent: whither all things that pass away in time call us, when they mean well and are not falsely put forward. For, in fact, all the signs which we produce by sounds do signify something which is not sound. For God is not the two short syllables “Deus,” and it is not the two short syllables that we worship, and it is not the two short syllables that we adore, nor is it to the two short syllables that we desire to come—two syllables which almost cease to sound before they have begun to sound; nor in sounding them is there room for the second until the first has passed away. There remains, then, something great which is called “God,” although the sound does not remain when we say the word “God.” Thus direct your thoughts to the doctrine of Christ, and ye shall arrive at the Word of God; and when you have arrived at the Word of God, consider this, “The Word was God,” and you will see that it was said truly, “my doctrine:” consider also whose the Word is, and you will see that it was rightly said, “is not mine.”

5. Therefore, to speak briefly, beloved, it seems to me that the Lord Jesus Christ said, “My doctrine is not mine,” meaning the same thing as if He said, “I am not from myself.” For although we say and believe that the Son is equal to the Father, and that there is not any diversity of nature and substance in them, that there has not intervened any interval of time between Him that begets and Him that is begotten, nevertheless we say these things, while keeping and guarding this, that the one is the Father, the other the Son. But Father He is not if He have not a Son, and Son He is not if He have not a Father: but yet the Son is God from the Father; and the Father is God, but not from the Son. The Father of the Son, not God from the Son: but the other is Son of the Father, and God from the Father. For the Lord Christ is called Light from Light. The Light then which is not from Light, and the equal Light which is not from Light, are together one Light not two Lights.

6. If we have understood this, thanks be to God; but if any has not sufficiently understood, man has done as far as he could: as for the rest, let him see whence he may hope to understand. As laborers outside, we can plant and water; but it is of God to give the increase. “My doctrine,” saith He, “is not mine, but His that sent me.” Let him who says he has not yet understood hear counsel. For since it was a great and profound matter that had been spoken, the Lord Christ Himself did certainly see that all would not understand this so profound a matter, and He gave counsel in the sequel. Dost thou wish to understand? Believe. For God has said by the prophet: “Except ye believe, ye shall not understand.”573 To the same purpose what the Lord here also added as He went on—“If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.” What is the meaning of this, “If any man be willing to do His will”? But I had said, if any man believe; and I gave this counsel: If thou hast not understood, said I, believe. For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand; since, “except ye believe, ye shall not understand.” Therefore when I would counsel the obedience of believing toward the possibility of understanding, and say that our Lord Jesus Christ has added this very thing in the following sentence, we find Him to have said, “If any man be willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” What is “he shall know”? It is the same thing as “he shall understand.” But what is “If any man be willing to do His will”? It is the same thing as to believe. All men indeed perceive that “shall know” is the same thing as “shall understand:” but that the saying, “If any man be willing to do His will,” refers to believing, all do not perceive; to perceive this more accurately, we need the Lord Himself for expounder, to show us whether the doing of the Father’s will does in reality refer to believing. But who does not know that this is to do the will of God, to work the work of God; that is, to work that work which is pleasing to Him? But the Lord Himself says openly in another place: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He has sent.”574 “That ye believe on Him,” not, that ye believe Him. But if ye believe on Him, ye believe Him; yet he that believes Him does not necessarily believe on Him. For even the devils believed Him, but they did not believe on Him. Again, moreover, of His apostles we can say, we believe Paul; but not, we believe on Paul: we believe Peter; but not, we believe on Peter. For, “to him that believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted unto him for righteousness.”575 What then is “to believe on Him”? By believing 573 Isa. vii. 9. 574 John vi. 29. 575 Rom. iv. 5. to love Him, by believing to esteem highly, by believing to go into Him and to be incorporated in His members. It is faith itself then that God exacts from us: and He finds not that which He exacts, unless He has bestowed what He may find. What faith, but that which the apostle has most amply defined in another place, saying, “Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by love?” 576 Not any faith of what kind soever, but “faith that worketh by love:” let this faith be in thee, and thou shall understand concerning the doctrine. What indeed shall thou understand? That “this doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me;” that is, thou shall understand that Christ the Son of God, who is the doctrine of the Father, is not from Himself, but is the Son of the Father.

7. This sentence overthrows the Sabellian heresy. The Sabellians have dared to affirm that the Son is the very same as He who is also the Father: that the names are two, but the reality one. If the names were two and reality one, it would not be said, “My doctrine is not mine.” Anyhow, if Thy doctrine is not Thine, O Lord, whose is it, unless there be another whose it is? The Sabellians understand not what Thou saidst; for they see not the trinity, but follow the error of their own heart. Let us worshippers of the trinity and unity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and one God, understand concerning Christ’s doctrine, how it is not His. And He said that He spoke not from Himself for this reason, because Christ is the Son of the Father, and the Father is the Father of Christ; and the Son is from God the Father, God, but God the Father is God not from God the Son.

8. “He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: ‘This will be he who is called Antichrist,’ exalting himself,” as the apostle says, “above all that is called God, and that is worshipped.”577 The Lord, declaring that this same it is that will seek his own glory, not the glory of the Father, says to the Jews: “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye have not received me; another will come in his own name, him ye will receive.”578 He intimated that they would receive Antichrist, who will seek the glory of his own name, puffed up, not solid; and therefore not stable, but assuredly ruinous. But our Lord Jesus Christ has shown us a great example of humility: for doubtless He is equal with the Father, for “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;” yea, doubtless, He Himself said, and most truly said, “Am I so long time with you, and ye have not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”579 Yea, doubtless, Himself said, and most truly said, “I and the Father are one.”580 If, therefore, He is one with the Father, equal to the Father, God from God, God with God, coeternal, immortal, alike unchangeable, alike 576 Gal. v. 6. 577 2 Thess. ii. 4. 578 John v. 45. 579 John xiv. 9. 580 John x. 30. without time, alike Creator and disposer of times; and yet because He came in time, and took the form of a servant, and in condition was found as a man,581 He seeks the glory of the Father, not His own; what oughtest thou to do, O man, who, when thou doest anything good, seekest thy own glory; but when thou doest anything ill, dost meditate calumny against God? Consider thyself: thou art a creature, acknowledge thy Creator: thou art a servant, despise not thy Lord: thou art adopted, not for thy own merits; seek His glory from whom thou hast this grace, that thou art a man adopted; His, whose glory He sought who is from Him, the Only-begotten. “But He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.” In Antichrist, however, there is unrighteousness, and he is not true; because he will seek his own glory, not His by whom he was sent: for, indeed, he was not sent, but only permitted to come. Let us all, therefore, that belong to the body of Christ, seek not our own glory, that we be not led into the snares of Antichrist. But if Christ sought His glory that sent Him, how much more ought we to seek the glory of Him who made us?

1. The passage of the holy Gospel of which we have before discoursed to you, beloved, is followed by that of to-day, which has just now been read. Both the disciples and the Jews heard the Lord speaking; both men of truth and liars heard the Truth speaking; both friends and enemies heard Charity speaking; both good men and bad men heard the Good speaking. They heard, but He discerned; He saw and foresaw whom His discourse profited and would profit. Among those who were then, He saw; among us who were to be, He foresaw. Let us therefore hear the Gospel, just as if we were listening to the Lord Himself present: nor let us say, O happy they who were able to see Him! because there were many of them who saw, and also killed Him; and there are many among us who have not seen Him, and yet have believed. For the precious truth that sounded forth from the mouth of the Lord was both written for our sakes, and preserved for our sakes, and recited for our sakes, and will be recited also for the sake of our prosperity, even until the end of the world. The Lord is above; but the Lord, the Truth, is also here. For the body of the Lord, in which He rose again from the dead, can be only in one place; but His truth is everywhere diffused. Let us then hear the Lord, and let us also speak that which He shall have granted to us concerning His own words.

2. “Did not Moses,” saith He, “give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law? Why do ye seek to kill me?” For ye seek to kill me just for this reason, that none of you doeth the law; for if ye did do the law, ye would recognize Christ in its very letters, and ye would not kill Him when present with you. And they answered: “The crowd answered Him;” answered as a tumultuous crowd,582 things not pertaining to order, but to confusion; in a word, the crowd was disturbed. See what answer it made: “Thou hast a devil: who seeks to kill thee?” As if it were not worse to say, “Thou hast a devil,” than to kill Him. To Him, indeed, was it said, that He had a devil, who was casting out devils. What else can a turbulent disorderly crowd say? What else can filth stirred up do but stink? The crowd was disturbed; by what? By the truth. For the eyes that have not soundness cannot endure the brightness of the light.

3. But the Lord, manifestly not disturbed, but calm in His truth, rendered not evil for evil nor railing for railing;583 although, if He were to say to these men, You have a devil, He would certainly be saying what was true. For they would not have said such things to the Truth, unless the falsehood of the devil had instigated them. What then did He answer? Let us calmly hear, and drink in the serene word: “I have done one work, and ye all marvel.” As if He said, What if ye were to see all my works? For they were His works which they saw in 582 Turba. 583 1 Pet. iii. 9. the world, and yet they saw not Him who made them all: He did one thing, and they were disturbed because he made a man whole on the Sabbath-day. As if, indeed, when any sick man recovered his health on the Sabbath-day, it had been any other that made such a man whole than He who offended them, because He made one man whole on the Sabbath-day. For who else has made others whole than He who is health itself,—He who gives even to the beasts that health which He gave to this man? For it was bodily health. The health of the flesh is repaired, and the flesh dies; and when it is repaired, death is only put off, not taken away. However, even that same health, brethren, is from the Lord, through whomsoever it may be given: by whose care and ministry soever it may be imparted, it is given by Him from whom all health is, to whom it is said in the psalm, “O Lord, Thou wilt save men and beasts; as Thou hast multiplied Thy mercy, O God.” For because Thou art God Thy multiplied mercy reaches even to the safety of human flesh, reaches even to the safety of dumb animals; but Thou who givest health of flesh common to men and beasts, is there no health which Thou reservest for men? There is certainly another which is not only not common to men and beasts, but to men themselves is not common to good and bad. In a word, when he had there spoken of this health which men and cattle receive in common, because of that health which men, but only the good, ought to hope for, he added as he went on: “But the sons of men shall put their trust under the cover of Thy wings. They shall be fully satisfied with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou shalt give them drink from the torrent of Thy pleasure. For with Thee is the fountain of life; and in Thy light shall they see light.”584 This is the health which belongs to good men, those whom he called “sons of men;” whilst he had said above, “O Lord, Thou shall save men and beasts.” How then? Were not those men sons of men, that after he had said men, he should go on and say, But the sons of men: as if men and sons of men meant different things? Yet I do not believe that the Holy Spirit had said this without some indication of distinction. The term men refers to the first Adam, sons of men to Christ. Perhaps, indeed, men relate to the first man; but sons of men relate to the Son of man.

4. “I have done one work, and ye all marvel.” And immediately He subjoined: “Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision.” It was well done that ye received circumcision from Moses. “Not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers;” since it was Abraham that first received circumcision from the Lord.585 “And ye circumcise on the Sabbath-day.” Moses has convicted you: ye have received in the law to circumcise on the eighth day; ye have received in the law to cease from labor on the seventh day;586 if the eighth day from the child’s birth fall on the seventh day of the week, what will ye do? Will ye abstain from work to keep the Sabbath, or will ye circumcise to fulfill the sacrament of the eighth day? But I know, saith He, what 584 Ps. xxxvi. 7–10. 585 Gen. xvii. 10. 586 Ex. xx. 10. ye do. “Ye circumcise a man.” Why? Because circumcision relates to what is a kind of seal of salvation, and men ought not to abstain from the work of salvation on the Sabbath-day. Therefore be ye not “angry with me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath-day.” “If,” saith He, “a man on the Sabbath-day receiveth circumcision that the law should not be broken” (for it was something saving that was ordained by Moses in that ordinance of circumcision), why are ye angry at me for working a healing on the Sabbath-day?

5. Perhaps, indeed, that circumcision pointed to the Lord Himself, at whom they were indignant, because He worked cures and healing. For circumcision was commanded to be applied on the eighth day: and what is circumcision but the spoiling of the flesh? This circumcision, then, signified the removal of carnal lusts from the heart. Therefore not without cause was it given, and ordered to be made in that member; since by that member the creature of mortal kind is procreated. By one man came death, just as by one man the resurrection of the dead;587 and by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.588 Therefore every man is born with a foreskin, because every man is born with the vice of propagation; and God cleanses not, either from the vice with which we are born, or from the vices which we add thereto by ill living, except by the stony knife, the Lord Christ. For Christ was the Rock. Now they used to circumcise with stone knives, and by the name of rock they prefigured Christ; and yet when He was present with them they did not acknowledge Him, but besides, they sought to kill Him. But why on the eighth day, unless because after the seventh day of the week the Lord rose again on the Lord’s day? Therefore Christ’s resurrection, which happened on the third day indeed of His passion, but on the eighth day in the days of the week, that same resurrection it is that doth circumcise us. Hear of those that were circumcised with the real stone, while the apostle admonishes them: “If then ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting on the right hand of God; set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”589 He speaks to the circumcised: Christ has risen; He has taken away from you carnal desires, evil lusts, the superfluity with which you were born, and that far worse which you had added thereto by ill living; being circumcised by the Rock, why do you still set your affections on the earth? And finally, for that “Moses gave you the law, and ye circumcise a man on the Sabbath-day,” understand that by this is signified the good work which I have done, in that I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath-day; because he was cured that he might be whole in body, and also he believed that he might be whole in soul.

6. “Judge not according to personal appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” What is this? Just now, you who by the law of Moses circumcise on the Sabbath-day are not angry 587 1 Cor. xv. 21. 588 Rom. v. 12. 589 Col. iii. 1, 2. with Moses; and because I made a man whole on the Sabbath-day you are angry with me. You judge by the person; give heed to the truth. I do not prefer myself to Moses, says the Lord, who was also the Lord of Moses. So consider us as you would two men, as both men; judge between us, but judge a true judgment; do not condemn him by honoring me, but honor me by understanding him. For this He said to them in another place: “If ye believed Moses ye would certainly believe me also, for he wrote of me.”590 But in this place He willed not to say this, Himself and Moses being as it were placed before these men for judgment. Because of Moses’ law you circumcise, even when it happens to be the Sabbath-day, and will ye not that I should show the beneficence of healing during the Sabbath? For the Lord of circumcision and the Lord of the Sabbath is the same who is the Author of health; and they are servile works that ye are forbidden to do on the Sabbath; if ye really understand what servile works are, ye sin not. For he that committeth sin is the servant of sin. Is it a servile work to heal a man on the Sabbath-day? Ye do eat and drink (to infer somewhat from the admonition of our Lord Jesus Christ, and from His words); at any rate, why do ye eat and drink on the Sabbath, but because that what ye do pertains to health? By this ye show that the works of health are not in any wise to be omitted on the Sabbath. Therefore “do not judge by person, but judge righteous judgment.” Consider me as ye would a man; consider Moses as a man: if ye will judge according to the truth, ye will condemn neither Moses nor me; and when ye know the truth ye will know me, because I am the Truth.

7. It requires great labor in this world, brethren to get clear of the vice which the Lord has noted in this place, so as not to judge by appearance, but to keep right judgment. The Lord, indeed, admonished the Jews, but He warned us also; them He convicted, us He instructed; them He reproved, us He encouraged. Let us not imagine that this was not said to us, simply because we were not there at that time. It was written, it is read; when it was recited we heard it; but we heard it as said to the Jews; let us not place ourselves behind ourselves and watch Him reproving enemies, while we ourselves do that which the truth may reprove in us. The Jews indeed judged by appearance, but for that reason they belong not to the New Testament, they have not the kingdom of heaven in Christ, nor are joined to the society of the holy angels; they sought earthly things of the Lord; for a land of promise, victory over enemies, fruitfulness of child-bearing, increase of children, abundance of fruit,—all which things were indeed promised to them by God, the True and the Good, promised to them, however, as unto carnal men,—all these things made for them the Old Testament. What is the Old Testament? The inheritance, as it were, belonging to the old man. We have been renewed, have been made a new man, because He who is the new man has come. What is so new as to be born of a virgin? Therefore, because there was not in Him what instruction might renew, because He had no sin, there was given Him a new origin of birth. In Him a 590 John v. 46. new birth, in us a new man. What is a new man? A man renewed from oldness. Renewed unto what? Unto desiring heavenly things, unto longing for things eternal, unto earnestly seeking the country which is above and fears no foe, where we do not lose a friend nor fear an enemy; where we live with good affection, without any want; where no longer any advances, because none fails; where no man is born, because no man dies; where there is no hungering nor thirsting; where immortality is fullness, and truth our aliment. Having these promises, and pertaining to the New Testament, and being made heirs of a new inheritance, and co-heirs of the Lord Himself, we have a far different hope from theirs: let us not judge by appearance, but hold right judgment.

8. Who is he that judges not according to the person? He that loves equally. Equal love causes that persons be not accepted. It is not when we honor men in diverse measure according to their degrees that we ought to fear lest we are accepting persons. For where we judge between two, and at times between relations, sometimes it happens that judgment has to be made between father and son; the father complains of a bad son, or the son complains of a harsh father; we regard the honor which is due to the father from the son; we do not make the son equal to the father in honor, but we give him preference if he has a good cause: let us regard the son on an equality with the father in the truth, and thus shall we bestow the honor due, so that equity destroy not merit. Thus we profit by the words of the Lord, and that we may profit, we are assisted by His grace.

1. You remember, beloved, in the former discourses,—for it was both read in the Gospel and also discussed by us according to our ability,—how that the Lord Jesus went up to the feast-day, as it were in secret, not because He feared lest He should be laid hold of,—He who had the power not to be laid hold of,—but to signify that even in that very feast which was celebrated by the Jews He Himself was hidden, and that the mystery of the feast was His own. In the passage read to-day then, that which was supposed to be timidity appeared as power; for He spoke openly on the feast-day, so that the crowds marvelled, and said that which we have heard when the passage was read: “Is not this he whom they sought to kill? And, lo, he speaketh openly, and they say nothing. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the Christ?” They who knew with what fierceness He was sought after, wondered by what power He was kept from being taken. Then, not fully understanding His power, they fancied it was the knowledge of the rulers, that these rulers knew Him to be the very Christ, and that for this reason they spared Him whom they had with so much eagerness sought out to be put to death.

2. Then those same persons who had said, “Did the rulers know that this is the Christ?” proposed a question among themselves, by which it appeared to them that He was not the Christ; for they said in addition, “But we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is.” As to how this opinion among the Jews arose, that “when Christ comes, no man knoweth whence He is” (for it did not arise without reason), if we consider the Scriptures, we find, brethren, that the Holy Scriptures have declared of Christ that “He shall be called a Nazarene.”591 Therefore they foretold whence He is. Again, if we seek the place of His nativity, as that whence He is by birth, neither was this hidden from the Jews, because of the Scriptures which had foretold these things. For when the Magi, on the appearing of a star, sought Him out to worship Him, they came to Herod and told him what they sought and what they meant: and he, having called together those who had knowledge of the law, inquired of them where Christ should be born: they told him, “In Bethlehem of Judah,” and also brought forward the prophetic testimony.592 If, therefore, the prophets had foretold both the place where the origin of His flesh was, and the place where His mother would bring Him forth, whence did spring that opinion among the Jews which we have just heard, but from this, that the Scriptures had proclaimed beforehand, and had foretold both? In respect of His being man, the Scriptures foretold whence He should be; in respect of His being God, this was hidden from the ungodly, and it required 591 Matt. ii. 23. 592 Matt. ii. 6. godly men to discover it. Moreover, they said this, “When Christ comes, no man knoweth whence He is,” because that which was spoken by Isaiah produced this opinion in them, viz. “And His generation, who shall tell?”593 In short, the Lord Himself made answer to both, that they both did, and also did not know whence He was; that He might testify to the holy prophecy which before was predicted of Him, both as to the humanity of infirmity and also as to the divinity of majesty.

3. Hear, therefore, the word of the Lord, brethren; see how He confirmed to them both what they said, “We know this man whence he is,” and also what they said, “When Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence He is. Then cried Christ in the temple, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but He that sent me is true, whom ye know not.” That is to say, ye both know me, and ye know me not; ye both know whence I am, and ye know not whence I am. Ye know whence I am: Jesus of Nazareth, whose parents also ye knew. For in this case, the birth of the Virgin alone was hidden, to whom, however, her husband was witness; for the same was able faithfully to declare this, who was also able as a husband to be jealous. Therefore, this birth of the Virgin excepted, they knew all that in Jesus pertains to man: His face was known, His country was known, His family was known; where He was born was to be known by inquiry. Rightly then did He say, “Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am,” according to the flesh and form of man which He bore; but according to His divinity, “And I am not come of myself, but He that sent me is true, whom ye know not;” but yet that ye may know Him, believe on Him whom He has sent, and ye will know Him. For, “No man has seen God at any time, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him:” 594 and, “None knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”595

4. Lastly, when He had said, “But He that sent me is true, whom ye know not,” in order to show them whence they might know that which they did not know, He subjoined, “I know Him.” Therefore seek from me to know Him. But why is it that I know Him? “Because I am from Him, and He sent me.” Gloriously has He shown both. “I am from Him,” said He; because the Son is from the Father, and whatever the Son is, He is of Him whose Son He is. Hence we say that the Lord Jesus is God of God: we do not say that the Father is God of God, but simply God: and we say that the Lord Jesus is Light of Light; we do not say that the Father is Light of Light, but simply Light. Accordingly, to this belongs that which He said “I am from Him.” But as to my being seen of you in the flesh, “He sent me.” When thou hearest “He sent me,” do not understand a difference of nature to be meant, but the authority of Him that begets.

1. Among the dissensions and doubtings of the Jews concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, among other things which He said, by which some were confounded, others taught: “On the last day of that feast” (for it was then that these things were done) which is called the feast of tabernacles; that is, the building of tents, of which feast you remember, my beloved, that we have already discoursed, the Lord Jesus Christ calls, not by speaking in any way soever, but by crying aloud, that whoso thirsts may come to Him. If we thirst, let us come; and not by our feet, but by our affections; let us come, not by removing from our place, but by loving. Although, according to the inner man, he that loves does also move from a place. But it is one thing to move with the body, another thing to move with the heart: he migrates with the body who changes his place by a motion of the body; he migrates with the heart who changes his affection by a motion of the heart. If thou lovest one thing, and didst love another thing before, thou art not now where thou wast.

2. Accordingly, the Lord cries aloud to us: for, “He stood and cried out, if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” We are not obliged to delay to inquire what this meant, since the evangelist has explained it. For why the Lord said, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink;” and, “He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water;” the evangelist has subsequently explained, saying: “But this spake He of the Spirit which they that believe on Him should receive. For the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” There is therefore an inner thirst and an inner belly, because there is an inner man. And that inner man is indeed invisible, but the outer man is visible; but yet better is the inner than the outer. And this which is not seen is the more loved; for it is certain that the inner man is loved more than the outer. How is this certain? Let every man prove it in himself. For although they who live ill may surrender their minds to the body, yet they do wish to live, and to live is the property of the mind only; and they who rule, manifest themselves more than those things that are ruled. Now it is minds that rule, bodies are ruled. Every man rejoices in pleasure, and receives pleasure by the body: but separate the mind from it, and nothing remains in the body to rejoice; and if there is joy of the body, it is the mind that rejoices. If it has joy of its dwelling, ought it not to have joy of itself? And if the mind has whereof it may have delight outside itself, does it remain without delights within? It is quite certain that a man loves his soul more than his body. But further, a man loves the soul even in another man more than the body. What is it that is loved in a friend, where the love is the purer and more sincere? What in the friend is loved—the mind, or the body? If fidelity is loved, the mind is loved; if benevolence is loved, the mind is the seat of benevolence: if this is what thou lovest in another, that he too loves thee, it is the mind thou lovest, because it is not the flesh, but the mind that loves. For therefore thou lovest, because he loves thee: ask why he loves thee, and then see what it is thou lovest. Consequently, it is more loved, and yet is not seen.

3. I would say something further, by which it may more clearly appear to you, beloved, how much the mind is loved, and how it is preferred to the body. Those wanton lovers even, who delight in beauty of bodies, and are charmed by shapeliness of limbs, love the more when they are loved. For when a man loves, and finds that he is regarded with hatred, he feels more anger than liking. Why does he feel anger rather than liking? Because the love that he bestows is not given him in return. If, therefore, even the lovers of bodies desire to be loved in return, and this delights them more when they are loved, what shall we say of the lovers of minds? And if the lovers of minds are great, what shall we say of the lovers of God who makes minds beautiful? For as the mind gives grace to the body, so it is God that gives grace to the mind. For it is only the mind that causes that in the body by which it is loved; when the mind has left it, it is a corpse at which thou hast a horror; and how much soever thou mayest have loved its beautiful limbs, thou makest haste to bury it. Hence, the ornament of the body is the mind; the ornament of the mind is God.

4. The Lord, therefore, cries aloud to us to come and drink, if we thirst within; and He says that when we have drunk, rivers of living water shall flow from our belly. The belly of the inner man is the conscience of the heart. Having drunk that water then, the conscience being purged begins to live; and drinking in, it will have a fountain, will be itself a fountain. What is the fountain, and what the river that flows from the belly of the inner man? Benevolence, whereby a man will consult the interest of his neighbor. For if he imagines that what he drinks ought to be only for his own satisfying, there is no flowing of living water from his belly; but if he is quick to consult for the good of his neighbor, then he becomes not dry, because there is a flowing. We will now see what it is that they drink who believe in the Lord; because we surely are Christians, and if we believe, we drink. And it is every man’s duty to know in himself whether or not he drinks, and whether he lives by what he drinks; for the fountain does not forsake us if we forsake not the fountain.

5. The evangelist explained, as I have said, whereof the Lord had cried out, to what kind of drink He had invited, what He had procured for them that drink, saying, “But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” What spirit does He speak of, if not the Holy Spirit? For every man has in himself a spirit of his own, of which I spoke when I was commending to you the consideration of the mind. For every man’s mind is his own spirit: of which the Apostle Paul says, “For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of the man which is in himself?” And then he added, “So also the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.”615 None knows the things that are ours but our own spirit. I 615 1 Cor. ii. 11. indeed do not know what are thy thoughts, nor dost thou know what are mine; for those things which we think within are our own, peculiar to ourselves; and his own spirit is the witness of every man’s thoughts. “So also the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” We with our spirit, God with His: so, however, that God with His Spirit knows also what goes on within us; but we are not able, without His own Spirit, to know what takes place in God. God, however, knows in us even what we know not in ourselves. For Peter did not know his own weakness, when he heard from the Lord that he would deny Him thrice: the sick man was ignorant of his own condition; the Physician knew him to be sick. There are then certain things which God knows in us, while we ourselves know them not. So far, however, as belongs to men, no man knows a man as he does himself: another does not know what is going on within him, but his own spirit knows it. But on receiving the Spirit of God, we learn also what takes place in God: not the whole, for we have not received the whole. We know many things from the pledge; for we have received a pledge, and the fullness of this pledge shall be given hereafter. Meanwhile, let the pledge console us in our pilgrimage here; because he who has condescended to bind himself to us by a pledge, is prepared to give us much. If such is the token, what must that be of which it is the token?

6. But what is meant by this which he says, “For the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified?” He is understood to say this in a sense that is evident. For the meaning is not that the Spirit of God, which was with God, was not in being; but was not yet in them who had believed on Jesus. For thus the Lord Jesus disposed not to give them the Spirit of which we speak, until after His resurrection; and this not without a cause. And perhaps if we inquire, He will favor us to find; and if we knock, He will open for us to enter. Piety knocks, not the hand, though the hand also knocks, if it cease not from works of mercy. What then is the cause why the Lord Jesus Christ determined not to give the Holy Spirit until He should be glorified? which thing before we speak of as we may be able, we must first inquire, lest that should trouble any one, in what manner the Spirit was not yet in holy men, whilst we read in the Gospel concerning the Lord Himself newly born, that Simeon by the Holy Spirit recognized Him; that Anna the widow, a prophetess, also recognized Him;616 that John, who baptized Him, recognized Him;617 that Zacharias, being filled with the Holy Ghost, said many things; that Mary herself received the Holy Ghost to conceive the Lord.618 We have therefore many preceding evidences of the Holy Spirit before the Lord was glorified by the resurrection of His flesh. Nor was it another spirit that the prophets also had, who proclaimed beforehand the coming of Christ. But still, there was to be a certain manner of this giving, which had not at all appeared before. For nowhere do we read before 616 Luke ii. 25–38. 617 John i. 26–34. 618 Luke i. 35–79. this, that men being gathered together had, by receiving the Holy Ghost, spoken in the tongues of all nations. But after His resurrection, when He first appeared to His disciples, He said to them: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” Of this giving then it is said, “The Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. And He breathed upon their faces,”619 He who with His breath enlivened the first man, and raised him up from the clay, by which breath He gave a soul to the limbs; signifying that He was the same who breathed upon their faces, that they might rise out of the mire and renounce their miry works. Then, after His resurrection, which the evangelist calls His glorifying, did the Lord first give the Holy Ghost to His disciples. Then having tarried with them forty days, as the book of the Acts of the Apostles shows, while they were seeing Him and companying with Him, He ascended into heaven in their sight. There at the end of ten days, on the day of Pentecost, He sent the Holy Ghost from above. Which having received, they, who had been gathered together in one place, as I have said, being filled withal, spoke in the tongues of all nations.

7. How then, brethren, because he that is baptized in Christ, and believes on Him, does not speak now in the tongues of all nations, are we not to believe that he has received the Holy Ghost? God forbid that our heart should be tempted by this faithlessness. Certain we are that every man receives: but only as much as the vessel of faith that he shall bring to the fountain can contain, so much does He fill of it. Since, therefore, the Holy Ghost is even now received by men, some one may say, Why is it that no man speaks in the tongues of all nations? Because the Church itself now speaks in the tongues of all nations. Before, the Church was in one nation, where it spoke in the tongues of all. By speaking then in the tongues of all, it signified what was to come to pass; that by growing among the nations, it would speak in the tongues of all. Whoso is not in this Church, does not now receive the Holy Ghost. For, being cut off and divided from the unity of the members, which unity speaks in the tongues of all, let him declare for himself; he has it not. For if he has it, let him give the sign which was given then. What do we mean by saying, Let him give the sign which was then given? Let him speak in all tongues. He answers me: How then, dost thou speak in all tongues? Clearly I do; for every tongue is mine, namely, of the body of which I am a member. The Church, spread among the nations, speaks in all tongues; the Church is the body of Christ, in this body thou art a member: therefore, since thou art a member of that body which speaks with all tongues, believe that thou too speakest with all tongues. For the unity of the members is of one mind by charity; and that unity speaks as one man then spoke.

8. Consequently, we too receive the Holy Ghost if we love the Church, if we are joined together by charity, if we rejoice in the Catholic name and faith. Let us believe, brethren; as much as every man loves the Church of Christ, so much has he the Holy Ghost. For the 619 John xx. 22. Spirit is given, as the apostle saith, “to manifestation.” To what manifestation? Just as the same apostle saith, “For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge after the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the gift of healing in one Spirit, to another the working of miracles in the same Spirit.”620 For there are many gifts given to manifestation, but thou, it may be, hast nothing of all those I have said. If thou lovest, it is not nothing that thou hast: if thou lovest unity, whoever has aught in that unity has it also for thee. Take away envy, and what I have is thine too. The envious temper puts men apart, soundness of mind unites them. In the body, the eye alone sees; but is it for itself alone that the eye sees? It sees both for the hand and the foot, and for all the other members. If a blow be coming against the foot, the eye does not turn away from it, so as not to take precaution. Again, in the body, the hand alone works, but is it for itself alone the hand works? For the eye also it works: for if a coming blow comes, not against the hand, but only against the face, does the hand say, I will not move, because it is not coming to me? So the foot by walking serves all the members: all the other members are silent, and the tongue speaks for all. We have therefore the Holy Spirit if we love the Church; but we love the Church if we stand firm in its union and charity. For the apostle himself, after he had said that diverse gifts were bestowed on diverse men, just as the offices of the several members, saith, “Yet I show you a still more pre-eminent way;” and begins to speak of charity. This he put before tongues of men and angels, before miracles of faith, before knowledge and prophecy, before even that great work of mercy by which a man distributes to the poor all that he possesses; and, lastly, put it before even the martyrdom of the body: before all these so great things he put charity. Have it, and thou shalt have all: for without it, whatever thou canst have will profit nothing. But that thou mayest know that the charity of which we are speaking refers to the Holy Spirit (for the question now in hand in the Gospel is concerning the Holy Spirit), hear the apostle when he says, “The charity of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.”621

9. Why then was it the will of the Lord, seeing that the Spirit’s benefits in us are the greatest, because by Him the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, to give us that Spirit after His resurrection? Why did He signify by this? In order that in our resurrection our love may be inflamed, and may part from the love of the world to run wholly towards God. For here we are born and die: let us not love this world; let us migrate hence by love; by love let us dwell above, by that love by which we love God. In this sojourn of our life let us meditate on nothing else, but that here we shall not always be, and that by good living we shall prepare a place for ourselves there, whence we shall never migrate. For our Lord Jesus Christ, after that He is risen again, “now dieth no more;” “death,” as the apostle says, “shall 620 1 Cor. xii. 7–9. 621 Rom. v. 5. no more have dominion over Him.”622 Behold what we must love. If we live, if we believe on Him who is risen again, He will give us, not that which men love here who love not God, or love the more the less they love Him, but love this the less the more they love Him; but let us see what He has promised us. Not earthly and temporal riches, not honors and power in this world; for you see all these things given to wicked men, that they may not be highly prized by the good. Not, in short, bodily health itself, though it is He that gives that also, but that, as you see, He gives even to the beasts. Not long life; for what, indeed, is long that will some day have an end? It is not length of days that He has promised to His believers, as if that were a great thing, or decrepit old age, which all wish for before it comes, and all murmur at when it does come. Not beauty of person, which either bodily disease or that same old age which is desired drives away. One wishes to be beautiful, and also to live to be old: these two desires cannot agree together; if thou shalt be old, thou wilt not be beautiful; when old age comes, beauty will flee away; the vigor of beauty and the groaning of old age cannot dwell together in one body. All these things, then, are not what He promised us when He said, “He that believeth in me, let him come and drink, and out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” He has promised us eternal life, where we shall have no fear, where we shall not be troubled, whence we shall have no migration, where we shall not die; where there is neither bewailing a predecessor deceased, nor a hoping for a successor. Accordingly, because such is what He has promised to us that love Him, and glow with the charity of the Holy Spirit, therefore He would not give us that same Spirit until He should be glorified, so that He might show in His body the life which we have not now, but which we hope for in the resurrection.

1. You remember, my beloved, that in the last discourse, by occasion of the passage of the Gospel read, we spoke to you concerning the Holy Spirit. When the Lord had invited those that believe on Him to this drinking, speaking among those who meditated to lay hold of Him, and sought to kill Him, and were not able, because it was not His will: well, when He had spoken these things, there arose a dissension among the multitude concerning Him; some thinking that He was the very Christ, others saying that Christ shall not arise from Galilee. But they who had been sent to take Him returned clear of the crime and full of admiration. For they even gave witness to His divine doctrine, when those by whom they had been sent asked, “Why have ye not brought him?” They answered that they had never heard a man so speak: “For not any man so speaks.” But He spake thus, because He was God and man. But the Pharisees, repelling their testimony, said to them: “Are ye also deceived?” We see, indeed, that you also have been charmed by his discourses. “Hath any one of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on him? But this multitude who know not the law are cursed.” They who knew not the law believed on Him who had sent the law; and those men who were teaching the law despised Him, that it might be fulfilled which the Lord Himself had said, “I am come that they who see not may see, and they that see may be made blind.” 623 For the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, were made blind, and the people that knew not the law, and yet believed on the author of the law, were enlightened.

2. “Nicodemus,” however, “one of the Pharisees, who had come to the Lord by night,”—not indeed as being himself unbelieving, but timid; for therefore he came by night to the light, because he wished to be enlightened and feared to be known;—Nicodemus, I say, answered the Jews, “Doth our law judge a man before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” For they perversely wished to condemn before they examined. Nicodemus indeed knew, or rather believed, that if only they were willing to give Him a patient hearing, they would perhaps become like those who were sent to take Him, but preferred to believe. They answered, from the prejudice of their heart, what they had answered to those officers, “Art thou also a Galilean?” That is, one seduced as it were by the Galilean. For the Lord was said to be a Galilean, because His parents were from the city of Nazareth. I have said “His parents” in regard to Mary, not as regards the seed of man; for on earth He sought but a mother, He had already a Father on high. For His nativity on both sides was marvellous: divine without mother, human without father. What, then, said those would-be doctors of the law to Nicodemus? “Search the Scriptures, and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” Yet the 623 John ix. 39. Lord of the prophets arose thence. “They returned,” saith the evangelist, “every man to his own house.”

3. “Thence Jesus went unto the mount;” namely, to mount “Olivet,”—unto the fruitful mount, unto the mount of ointment, unto the mount of chrism. For where, indeed, but on mount Olivet did it become the Christ to teach? For the name of Christ is from chrism; χρισμα in the Greek, is called in Latin unctio, an anointing. And He has anointed us for this reason, because He has made us wrestlers against the devil. “And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came unto Him; and He sat down and taught them.” And He was not taken, for He did not yet deign to suffer.

4. And now observe wherein the Lord’s gentleness was tempted by His enemies. “And the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman just taken in adultery: and they set her in the midst, and said to Him, Master, this woman has just been taken in adultery. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? But this they said, tempting Him, that they might accuse Him.” Why accuse Him? Had they detected Himself in any misdeed; or was that woman said to have been concerned with Him in any manner? What, then, is the meaning of “tempting Him, that they might accuse Him”? We understand, brethren, that a wonderful gentleness shone out pre-eminently in the Lord. They observed that He was very meek, very gentle: for of Him it had been previously foretold, “Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most Mighty; in Thy splendor and beauty urge on, march on prosperously, and reign, because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness.”624 Accordingly, as a teacher, He brought truth; as a deliverer, He brought gentleness; as a protector, He brought righteousness. That He was to reign on account of these things, the prophet had by the Holy Spirit foretold. When He spoke His truth was acknowledged; when He was not provoked to anger against His enemies, His meekness was praised. Whilst, therefore, in respect of these two,—namely, His truth and meekness,—His enemies were tormented with malice and envy; in respect of the third,—namely, righteousness,—they laid a stumbling-block for Him. In what way? Because the law had commanded the adulterers to be stoned, and surely the law could not command what was unjust: if any man should say other than the law had commanded, he would be detected as unjust. Therefore they said among themselves, “He is accounted true, he appears to be gentle; an accusation must be sought against him in respect of righteousness. Let us bring before him a woman taken in adultery; let us say to him what is ordered in the law concerning such: if he shall approve her being stoned, he will not show his gentleness; if he consent to let her go, he will not keep righteousness. But, say they, that he may not lose the reputation of gentleness, for which he is become an object of love to the people, without doubt he will say that she must be let go. Hence we find an opportunity of accusing him, and we charge him as being a transgressor 624 Ps. xlv. 3, 4. of the law: saying to him, Thou art an enemy to the law; thou answerest against Moses, nay, against Him who gave the law through Moses; thou art worthy of death: thou too must be stoned with this woman.” By these words and sentiments they might possibly be able to inflame envy against Him, to urge accusation, and cause His condemnation to be eagerly demanded. But this against whom? It was perversity against rectitude, falsehood against the truth, the corrupt heart against the upright heart, folly against wisdom. When did such men prepare snares, into which they did not first thrust their own heads? Behold, the Lord in answering them will both keep righteousness, and will not depart from gentleness. He was not taken for whom the snare was laid, but rather they were taken who laid it, because they believed not on Him who could pull them out of the net.

5. What answer, then, did the Lord Jesus make? How answered the Truth? How answered Wisdom? How answered that Righteousness against which a false accusation was ready? He did not say, Let her not be stoned; lest He should seem to speak against the law. But God forbid that He should say, Let her be stoned: for He came not to lose what He had found, but to seek what was lost. What then did He answer? See you how full it is of righteousness, how full of meekness and truth! “He that is without sin of you,” saith He, “let him first cast a stone at her.” O answer of Wisdom! How He sent them unto themselves! For without they stood to accuse and censure, themselves they examined not inwardly: they saw the adulteress, they looked not into themselves. Transgressors of the law, they wished the law to be fulfilled, and this by heedlessly accusing; not really fulfilling it, as if condemning adulteries by chastity. You have heard, O Jews, you have heard, O Pharisees, you have heard, O teachers of the law, the guardian of the law, but have not yet understood Him as the Lawgiver. What else does He signify to you when He writes with His finger on the ground? For the law was written with the finger of God; but written on stone because of the hard-hearted. The Lord now wrote on the ground, because He was seeking fruit. You have heard then, Let the law be fulfilled, let the adulteress be stoned. But is it by punishing her that the law is to be fulfilled by those that ought to be punished? Let each of you consider himself, let him enter into himself, ascend the judgment-seat of his own mind, place himself at the bar of his own conscience, oblige himself to confess. For he knows what he is: for “no man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of man which is in him.” Each looking carefully into himself, finds himself a sinner. Yes, indeed. Hence, either let this woman go, or together with her receive ye the penalty of the law. Had He said, Let not the adulteress be stoned, He would be proved unjust: had He said, Let her be stoned, He would not appear gentle: let Him say what it became Him to say, both the gentle and the just, “Whoso is without sin of you, let him first cast a stone at her.” This is the voice of Justice: Let her, the sinner, be punished, but not by sinners: let the law be fulfilled, but not by the transgressors of the law. This certainly is the voice of justice: by which justice, those men pierced through as if by a dart, looking into themselves and finding themselves guilty, “one after another all withdrew.” The two were left alone, the wretched woman and Mercy. But the Lord, having struck them through with that dart of justice, deigned not to heed their fall, but, turning away His look from them, “again He wrote with His finger on the ground.”

6. But when that woman was left alone, and all they were gone out, He raised His eyes to the woman. We have heard the voice of justice, let us also hear the voice of clemency. For I suppose that woman was the more terrified when she had heard it said by the Lord, “He that is without sin of you, let him first cast a stone at her.” But they, turning their thought to themselves, and by that very withdrawal having confessed concerning themselves, had left the woman with her great sin to Him who was without sin. And because she had heard this, “He that is without sin. let him first cast a stone at her,” she expected to be punished by Him in whom sin could not be found. But He, who had driven back her adversaries with the tongue of justice, raising the eyes of clemency towards her, asked her, “Hath no man condemned thee?” She answered, “No man, Lord.” And He said, “Neither do I condemn thee;” by whom, perhaps, thou didst fear to be condemned, because in me thou hast not found sin. “Neither will I condemn thee.” What is this, O Lord? Dost Thou therefore favor sins? Not so, evidently. Mark what follows: “Go, henceforth sin no more.” Therefore the Lord did also condemn, but condemned sins, not man. For if He were a patron of sin, He would say, Neither will I condemn thee; go, live as thou wilt: be secure in my deliverance; how much soever thou wilt sin, I will deliver thee from all punishment even of hell, and from the tormentors of the infernal world. He said not this.

7. Let them take heed, then, who love His gentleness in the Lord, and let them fear His truth. For “The Lord is sweet and right.”625 Thou lovest Him in that He is sweet; fear Him in that He is right. As the meek, He said, “I held my peace;” but as the just, He said, “Shall I always be silent?”626 “The Lord is merciful and pitiful.” So He is, certainly. Add yet further, “Long-suffering;” add yet further, “And very pitiful:” but fear what comes last, “And true.”627 For those whom He now bears with as sinners, He will judge as despisers. “Or despisest thou the riches of His long-suffering and gentleness; not knowing that the forbearance of God leadeth thee to repentance? But thou, after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up for thyself wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds.”628 The Lord is gentle, the Lord is long-suffering, the Lord is pitiful; but the Lord is also just, the Lord is also true. He bestows on thee space for correction; but thou lovest the delay of judgment more than the amendment of thy ways. Hast thou been a bad man yesterday? To-day be a good man. Hast 625 Ps. xxv. 8. 626 Isa. xlii. 14. 627 Ps. lxxxvi. 15. 628 Rom. ii. 4–6. thou gone on in thy wickedness to-day? At any rate change to-morrow. Thou art always expecting, and from the mercy of God makest exceeding great promises to thyself. As if He, who has promised thee pardon through repentance, promised thee also a longer life. How knowest thou what to-morrow may bring forth? Rightly thou sayest in thy heart: When I shall have corrected my ways, God will put all my sins away. We cannot deny that God has promised pardon to those that have amended their ways and are converted. For in what prophet thou readest to me that God has promised pardon to him that amends, thou dost not read to me that God has promised thee a long life.

8. From both, then, men are in danger; both from hoping and despairing, from contrary things, from contrary affections. Who is deceived by hoping? He who says, God is good, God is merciful, let me do what I please, what I like; let me give loose reins to my lusts, let me gratify the desires of my soul. Why this? Because God is merciful, God is good, God is kind. These men are in danger by hope. And those are in danger from despair, who, having fallen into grievous sins, fancying that they can no more be pardoned upon repentance, and believing that they are without doubt doomed to damnation, do say with themselves, We are already destined to be damned, why not do what we please with the disposition of gladiators destined to the sword. This is the reason that desperate men are dangerous: for, having no longer aught to fear, they are to be feared exceedingly. Despair kills these; hope, those. The mind is tossed to and fro between hope and despair. Thou hast to fear lest hope slay thee; and, when thou hopest much from mercy, lest thou fall into judgment: again, thou hast to fear lest despair slay thee, and, when thou thinkest that the grievous sins which thou hast committed cannot be forgiven thee, thou dost not repent, and thou incurrest the sentence of Wisdom, which says, “I also will laugh at your perdition.”629 How then does the Lord treat those who are in danger from both these maladies? To those who are in danger from hope, He says, “Be not slow to be converted to the Lord, neither put it off from day to day; for suddenly His anger will come, and in the time of vengeance, will utterly destroy thee.”630 To those who are in danger from despair, what does He say? “In what day soever the wicked man shall be converted, I will forget all his iniquities.”631 Accordingly, for the sake of those who are in danger by despair, He has offered us a refuge of pardon; and because of those who are in danger by hope, and are deluded by delays, He has made the day of death uncertain. Thou knowest not when thy last day may come. Art thou ungrateful because thou hast to-day on which thou mayest be improved? Thus therefore said He to the woman, “Neither will I condemn thee;” but, being made secure concerning the past, beware of the future. 629 Prov. i. 26. 630 Ecclus. v. 8, 9. 631 Ezek. xviii. 21. “Neither will I condemn thee:” I have blotted out what thou hast done; keep what I have commanded thee, that thou mayest find what I have promised.

1. What we have just heard and attentively received, as the holy Gospel was being read, I doubt not that all of us have also endeavored to understand, and that each of us according to his measure apprehended what he could of so great a matter as that which has been read; and while the bread of the word is laid out, no one can complain that he has tasted nothing. But again I doubt not that there is scarcely any who has understood the whole. Nevertheless, even should there be any who may sufficiently understand the words of our Lord Jesus Christ now read out of the Gospel, let him bear with our ministry, whilst, if possible, with His assistance, we may, by treating thereof, cause that either all or many may understand that which a few are joyful of having understood for themselves.

2. I think that what the Lord says, “I am the light of the world, “is clear to those that have eyes, by which they are made partakers of this light: but they who have not eyes except in the flesh alone, wonder at what is said by the Lord Jesus Christ, “I am the light of the world.” And perhaps there may not be wanting some one too who says with himself: Whether perhaps the Lord Christ is that sun which by its rising and setting causes the day? For there have not been wanting heretics who thought this. The Manichæans have supposed that the Lord Christ is that sun which is visible to carnal eyes, exposed and public to be seen, not only by men, but by the beasts. But the right faith of the Catholic Church rejects such a fiction, and perceives it to be a devilish doctrine: not only by believing acknowledges it to be such, but in the case of whom it can, proves it even by reasoning. Let us therefore reject this kind of error, which the Holy Church has anathematized from the beginning. Let us not suppose that the Lord Jesus Christ is this sun which we see rising from the east, setting in the west; to whose course succeeds night, whose rays are obscured by a cloud, which removes from place to place by a set motion: the Lord Christ is not such a thing as this. The Lord Christ is not the sun that was made, but He by whom the sun was made. For “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.”

3. There is therefore a Light which made this light of the sun: let us love this Light, let us long to understand it, let us thirst for the same; that, with itself for our guide, we may at length come to it, and that we may so live in it that we may never die. This is indeed that Light of which prophecy long ago going before thus sang in the psalm: “O Lord, Thou shalt save men and beasts; even as Thy mercy is multiplied, O God.” These are the words of the holy psalm: mark ye what the ancient discourse of holy men of God did premise concerning such a light. “Men,” saith it, “and beasts Thou shalt save, O Lord; even as Thy mercy is multiplied, O God.” For since Thou art God, and hast manifold mercy, the same multiplicity of Thy mercy reaches not only to men whom Thou hast created in Thine own image, but even to the beasts which Thou hast made subservient to men. For He who gives salvation to man, the same gives salvation also to the beast. Do not blush to think this of the Lord thy God: nay, rather believe this and trust it, and see thou think not otherwise. He that saves thee, the same saves thy horse and thy sheep; to come to the very least, also thy hen: “Salvation is of the Lord,”632 and God saves these. Thou art uneasy, thou questionest. I wonder why thou doubtest. Shall He disdain to save who deigned to create? Of the Lord is the saving of angels, of men, and of beasts: “Salvation is of the Lord.” Just as no man is from himself, so no man is saved by himself. Therefore most truly and right well doth the psalm say, “O Lord, Thou shall save men and beasts.” Why? “Even as thy mercy is multiplied, O God.” For Thou art God, Thou hast created, Thou savest: Thou gavest being, Thou givest to be in health.

4. Since, therefore, as the mercy of God is multiplied, men and beasts are saved by Him, have not men something else which God as Creator bestows on them, which He bestows not on the beasts? Is there no distinction between the living creature made after the image of God, and the living creature made subject to the image of God? Clearly there is: beyond that salvation common to us with the dumb animals, there is what God bestows on us, but not on them. What is this? Follow on in the same psalm: “But the sons of men shall hope under the covert of Thy wings.” Having now a salvation in common with their cattle, “the sons of men shall hope under the covert of Thy wings.” They have one salvation in fact, another in hope. This salvation which is at present is common to men and cattle; but there is another which men hope for; and which they who hope for receive, they who despair of receive not. For it saith, “The sons of men shall hope under covert of Thy wings.” And they that perseveringly hope are protected by Thee, lest they be cast down from their hope by the devil: “Under covert of Thy wings they shall hope.” If they shall hope, what shall they hope for, but for what the cattle shall not have? “They shall be fully drunk with the fatness of Thy house; and from the torrent of Thy pleasure Thou shalt give them drink.” What sort of wine is that with which it is laudable to be drunk? What sort of wine is that which disturbs not the mind, but directs it? What sort of wine is that which makes perpetually sane, and makes not insane by drinking? “They shall be fully drunk.” How? “With the fatness of Thy house; and from the torrent of Thy pleasure Thou shalt give them drink.” How so? “Because with Thee is the fountain of life.” The very fountain of life walked on the earth, the same who said, “Whoso thirsts, let him come unto me.” Behold the fountain! But we begin to speak about the light, and to handle the question laid down from the Gospel concerning the light. For we read how the Lord said, “I am the light of the world.” Thence arose a question, lest any one, carnally understanding this, should fancy this light to mean the sun: we came thence to the psalm, which having considered, we found meanwhile that the Lord is the fountain of life. Drink and live. “With Thee,” it saith, “is the fountain of life;” therefore, “under the shadow of Thy wings the sons of men hope,” seeking to be full drunk with this 632 Ps. iii. 9. fountain. But we were speaking of the Light. Follow on, then; for the prophet, having said, “With Thee is the fountain of life,” went on to add, “In Thy light shall we see light,”—God of God, Light of Light. By this Light the sun’s light was made; and the Light which made the sun, under which He also made us, was made under the sun for our sake. That Light which made the sun, was made, I say, under the sun for our sake. Do not despise the cloud of the flesh; with that cloud it is covered, not to be obscured, but to be moderated.

5. That unfailing Light, the Light of wisdom, speaking through the cloud of the flesh, says to men, “I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” How He has withdrawn thee from the eyes of the flesh, and recalled thee to the eyes of the heart! For it is not enough to say, “Whoso followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have light;” He added too, “of life;” even as it was there said, “For with Thee is the fountain of life.” See thus, my brethren, how the words of the Lord agree with the truth of that psalm: both there, the light is put with the fountain of life, and by the Lord it is said, “light of life.” But for bodily use, light and fountain are different things: our mouths seek a fountain, our eyes light; when we thirst we seek a fountain, when we are in darkness we seek light; and if we chance to thirst in the night, we kindle a light to come to a fountain. Not so with God: light and fountain are the same thing: He who shines for thee that thou mayest see, the same flows for thee that thou mayest drink.

6. You see, then, my brethren, you see, if you see inwardly, what kind of light this is, of which the Lord says, “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness.” Follow the sun, and let us see if thou wilt not walk in darkness. Behold, by rising it comes forth to thee; it goes by its course towards the west. Perhaps thy journey is towards the east: unless thou goest in a contrary direction to that in which it travels, thou wilt certainly err by following it, and instead of east wilt get to the west. If thou follow it by land, thou wilt go wrong; if the mariner follow it by sea, he will go wrong. Finally, it seems to thee, suppose, that thou must follow the sun, and thou also travellest thyself towards the west, whither it also travels; let us see after it has set if thou wilt not walk in darkness. See how, although thou art not willing to desert it, yet it will desert thee, to finish the day by necessity of its service. But our Lord Jesus Christ, even when He was not manifest to all through the cloud of His flesh, was yet at the same time holding all things by the power of His wisdom. Thy God is whole everywhere: if thou fall not off from Him, He will never fall away from thee.

7. Accordingly, “He that followeth me,” saith He, “shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” What He has promised, He put in a word of the future tense; for He says not has, but “shall have the light of life.” Yet He does not say, He that shall follow me; but, he that does follow me. What it is our duty to do, He put in the present tense; but what He has promised to them that do it, He has indicated by a word of the future tense. “He that followeth, shall have.” That followeth now, shall have hereafter: followeth now by faith, shall have hereafter by sight. For, “whilst we are in the body,” saith the apostle, “we are absent from the Lord: for we walk by faith, not by sight.”633 When shall we walk by sight? When we shall have the light of life, when we shall have come to that vision, when this night shall have passed away. Of that day, indeed, which is to arise, it is said, “In the morning I will stand near thee, and contemplate thee.”634 What means “in the morning”? When the night of this world is over, when the terrors of temptations are over, when that lion which goeth about roaring in the night, seeking whom it may devour, is vanquished. “In the morning I will stand near thee, and contemplate.” Now what do we think, brethren, to be our duty for the present time, but what is again said in the psalm, “Every night through will I wash my couch; I will moisten my bed with my tears”? 635 Every night through, saith he, I will weep; I will burn with desire for the light. The Lord sees my desire: for another psalm says to Him, “All my desire is before Thee; and my groaning is not hid from Thee.”636 Dost thou desire gold? Thou canst be seen; for, while seeking gold, thou wilt be manifest to men. Dost thou desire corn? Thou askest one that has it; whom also thou informest, while seeking to get at that which thou desirest. Dost thou desire God? Who sees, but God? From whom, then, dost thou seek God, as thou seekest bread, water, gold, silver, corn? From whom dost thou seek God, except from God? He is sought from Himself who has promised Himself. Let the soul extend her desire, and with more capacious bosom seek to comprehend that which “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man.”637 Desire it we can, long for it we can, pant after it we can; but worthily conceive it, worthily unfold it in words, we cannot.

8. Wherefore, my brethren, since the Lord says briefly, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life;” in these words He has commanded one thing, promised another; let us do what He has commanded, that we may not with shameless face demand what He has promised; that He may not say to us in His judgment, Hast thou done what I commanded, that thou shouldest expect what I promised? What hast Thou commanded, then, O Lord our God? He says to thee, That thou shouldest follow me. Thou hast sought counsel of life? Of what life, but of that of which it is said, “With Thee is the fountain of life”? A certain man heard it said to him,” Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” He followed not, but went away sorrowful; he sought the “good Master,” went to Him as a teacher, and despised His teaching; he went away sorrowful, tied and bound by his lusts; he went away sorrowful, having a great load of avarice on his shoulders. He toiled and fretted; 633 2 Cor. v. 6, 7. 634 Ps. v. 4. 635 Ps. vi. 6. 636 Ps. xxxviii. 10. 637 1 Cor. ii. 9. and yet he thought that He, who was willing to rid him of his load, was not to be followed but forsaken. But after the Lord has, by the gospel, cried aloud, “Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,”638 how many, on hearing the gospel, have done what that rich man, on hearing from His own mouth, did not do? Therefore, let us do it now, let us follow the Lord; let us loose the fetters by which we are hindered from following Him. And who is sufficient to loose such bonds, unless He help, to whom it is said, “Thou hast burst asunder my bonds”?639 Of whom another psalm says, “The Lord looseth them that are in bonds; the Lord raiseth up them that are crushed and oppressed.”640

9. And what do they follow, who have been loosed and raised up, but the Light from which they hear, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness”? For the Lord gives light to the blind. Therefore we, brethren, having the eye-salve of faith, are now enlightened. For His spittle did before mingle with the earth, by which the eyes of him who was born blind were anointed. We, too, have been born blind of Adam, and have need of Him to enlighten us. He mixed spittle with clay: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” He mixed spittle with earth; hence it was predicted, “Truth has sprung from the earth;”641 and He said Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” When we shall see face to face, we shall have the full fruition of the truth; for this also is promised to us. For who would dare hope for what God had not deigned either to promise or to give? We shall see face to face. The apostle says, “Now I know in part, now through a glass darkly; but then, face to face.”642 And the Apostle John says in his epistle, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it has not yet appeared what we shall be: we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.”643 This is a great promise; if thou lovest, follow. I do love, sayest thou, but by what way am I to follow? If the Lord thy God had said to thee, “I am the truth and the life,” in desiring truth and longing for life, thou mightest truly ask the way by which thou mightest come to these, and mightest say to thyself: A great thing is the truth, a great thing is the life, were there only the means whereby my soul might come thereto! Dost thou ask by what way? Hear Him say at the first, “I am the way.” Before He said whither, He premised by what way: “I am,” saith He, “the way.” The way whither? “And the truth and the life.” First, He told thee the way to come; then, whither to come. I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. Remaining with the Father, the 638 Matt. xi. 29. 639 Ps. cxvi. 16. 640 Ps. xlvi. 8. 641 Ps. lxxxv. 11. 642 1 Cor. xiii. 12. 643 1 John iii. 2. truth and life; putting on flesh, He became the way. It is not said to thee, Labor in finding a way to come to the truth and life; this is not said to thee. Sluggard, arise: the way itself has come to thee, and roused thee from thy sleep; if, however, it has roused thee, up and walk. Perhaps thou art trying to walk, and art not able, because thy feet ache. How come thy feet to ache? Have they been running over rough places at the bidding of avarice? But the word of God has healed even the lame. Behold, thou sayest, I have my feet sound, but the way itself I see not. He has also enlightened the blind.

10. All this by faith, so long as we are absent from the Lord, dwelling in the body; but when we shall have traversed the way, and have reached the home itself, what shall be more joyful than we? What shall be more blessed than we? Because nothing more at peace than we; for there will be no rebelling against a man. But now, brethren, it is difficult for us to be without strife. We have indeed been called to concord, we are commanded to have peace among ourselves; to this we must give our endeavor, and strain with all our might, that we may come at last to the most perfect peace; but at present we are at strife, very often with those whose good we are seeking. There is one who goes astray, thou wishest to lead him to the way; he resists, thou strivest with him: the pagan resists thee, thou disputest against the errors of idols and devils; a heretic resists, thou disputest against other doctrines of devils; a bad catholic is not willing to live aright, thou rebukest even thy brother within; he dwells with thee in the house, and seeks the paths of ruin; thou art inflamed with eager passion to put him right, that thou mayest render to the Lord a good account of both concerning him. How many necessities of strife there are on every side! Very often one is overcome with weariness, and says to himself, “What have I to do with bearing with gainsayers, bearing with those who render evil for good? I wish to benefit them, they are willing to perish; I wear out my life in strife; I have no peace; besides, I make enemies of those whom I ought to have as friends, if they regarded the good will of him that seeks their good: what business is it of mine to endure this? Let me return to myself, I will be kept to myself, I will call upon my God. Do return to thyself, thou findest strife there. If thou hast begun to follow God, thou findest strife there. What strife, sayest thou, do I find? “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”644 Behold thou art thyself, thou art alone, thou art with thyself; behold, thou art bearing with no other person, but yet thou seest another law in thy members warring against the law of thy mind, and taking thee captive in the law of sin, which is in thy members. Cry aloud, then, and cry to God, that He may give thee peace from the inner strife: “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”645 Because, “He that followeth me,” saith He, “shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” All strife 644 Gal. v. 17. 645 Rom. vii. 23–25. ended, immortality shall follow; for “the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed.” And what peace will this be? “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”646 To which that we may come (for it will then be in reality), let us now follow in hope Him who said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

1. You who were present yesterday, bear in mind that we were a long while discoursing of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, where He says, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life;” and if we wished to go on discoursing of that light, we might still speak a long time; for it would be impossible for us to expound the matter in brief. Therefore, my brethren, let us follow Christ, the light of the world, that we may not be walking in darkness. We must fear the darkness,—not the darkness of the eyes, but that of the moral character; and even if it be the darkness of the eyes, it is not of the outer, but of the inner eyes, of those by which we discern, not between white and black, but between right and wrong.

2. When our Lord Jesus Christ had spoken these things, the Jews answered, “Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is not true.” Before our Lord Jesus Christ came, He lighted and sent many prophetic lamps before Him. Of these was also John Baptist, to whom the great Light itself, which is the Lord Christ, gave a testimony such as was given to no other man; for He said, “Among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.” 647 Yet this man, than whom none was greater among those born of women, said of the Lord Jesus Christ, “I indeed baptize you in water; but He that is coming is mightier than I, whose shoe I am not worthy to loose.”648 See how the lamps submits itself to the Day. The Lord Himself bears witness that the same John was indeed a lamp: “He was,” saith He, “a burning and a shining lamp; and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.”649 But when the Jews said to the Lord, “Tell us by what authority thou doest these things,” He, knowing that they regarded John the Baptist as a great one, and that the same whom they regarded as a great one had borne witness to them concerning the Lord, answered them, “I also will ask you one thing; tell me, the baptism of John, whence is it? from heaven, or from men?” Thrown into confusion, they considered among themselves that, if they said, “From men,” they might be stoned by the people, who believed John to be a prophet; if they said, “From heaven,” He might answer them, “He whom ye confess to have been a prophet from heaven bore testimony to me, and ye have heard from him by what authority I do these things.” They saw, then, that whichever of these two answers they made, they would fall into the snare, and they said, “We do not know.” And the Lord answered them, “Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.” 650 “I tell you not 647 Matt. xi. 11. 648 John i. 26, 27. 649 John v. 35. 650 Matt. xxi. 23–27. what I know, because you will not confess what you know.” Most justly, certainly, were they repulsed, and they departed in confusion; and that was fulfilled which God the Father says by the prophet in the psalm, “I have prepared a lamp for my Christ” (the lamp was John); “His enemies I will clothe with confusion.”651

3. The Lord Jesus Christ, then, had the witness of prophets sent before Him, of the heralds that preceded the judge: He had witness from John; but He was Himself the greater witness which He bore to Himself. But those men with their feeble eyes sought lamps, because they were not able to bear the day; for that same Apostle John, whose Gospel we have in our hands, says in the beginning of his Gospel, concerning John the Baptist: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was sent to bear witness of the light. That was the true light, that lighteth every man coming into the world.” If “every man,” therefore also lighteth John. Whence also the same John says, “We all have received out of His fullness.” Wherefore discern ye these things, that your minds may profit in the faith of Christ, that ye be not always babes seeking the breasts and shrinking from solid food. You ought to be nourished and to be weaned by our holy mother the Church of Christ, and to come to more solid food by the mind, not by the belly. This discern ye then, that the light which enlighteneth is one thing, another that which is enlightened. For also our eyes are called lights;652 and every man thus swears, touching his eyes, by these lights of his: “So may my lights live.” This is a customary oath. Let these lights, if lights they are, be opened, and shine for thee in thy closed chamber, when the light is not there; they certainly cannot. Therefore, as these which we have in our face, and call lights, when they are both healthy and open, need the help of light from without,—which being removed or not brought in, though they are sound and are open, yet they do not see,—so our mind, which is the eye of the soul, unless it be irradiated by the light of truth, and wondrously shone upon by Him who enlightens and is not enlightened, will not be able to come to wisdom nor to righteousness. For to live righteously is for us the way itself. But how can he on whom the light does not shine but stumble in the way? And hence, in such a way, we have need of seeing, in such a way it is a great thing to see. Now Tobias had the eyes in his face closed, and the son gave his hand to the father; and yet the father, by his instruction, pointed out the way to the son.653

4. The Jews then answered, “Thou bearest witness of thyself; thy witness is not true.” Let us see what they hear; let us also hear, yet not as they did: they despising, we believing; they wishing to slay Christ, we desiring to live through Christ. Let this difference distinguish 651 Ps. cxxxii. 17, 18. 652 Lumina. 653 Tobit ii. 11. our ears and minds from theirs, and let us hear what the Lord answers to the Jews. “Jesus answered and said to them, Though I bear witness of myself, my witness is true; because I know whence I came and whither I go.” The light shows both other things and also itself. Thou lightest a lamp, for instance, to look for thy coat, and the burning lamp affords thee light to find thy coat; dost thou light the lamp to see itself when it burns? A burning lamp is indeed capable at the same time of exposing to view other things which the darkness covered, and also of showing itself to thine eyes. So also the Lord Christ distinguished between His faithful ones and His Jewish enemies, as between light and darkness: as between those whom He illuminated with the ray of faith, and those on whose closed eyes He shed His light. So, too, the sun shines on the face of the sighted and of the blind; both alike standing and facing the sun are shone upon in the flesh, but both are not enlightened in the eyesight. The one sees, the other sees not: the sun is present to both, but one is absent from the present sun. So likewise the Wisdom of God, the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, is everywhere present, because the truth is everywhere, wisdom is everywhere. One man in the east understands justice, another man in the west understands justice; is justice which the one understands a different thing from that which the other understands? In body they are far apart, and yet they have the eyes of their minds on one object. The justice which I, placed here, see, if justice it is, is the same which the just man, separated from me in the flesh by ever so many days’ journey, also sees, and is united to me in the light of that justice. Therefore the light bears witness to itself; it opens the sound eyes and is its own witness, that it may be known as the light. But how about the unbelievers? Is it not present to them? It is present also to them, but they have not eyes of the heart with which to see it. Hear the sentence fetched from the Gospel itself concerning them: “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” 654 Hence the Lord saith, and saith truly, “Though I bear witness of myself, my witness is true; because I know whence I came and whither I go.” He meant us to understand the Father here: the Son gave glory to the Father. Himself the equal glorifies Him by whom He was sent. How ought man to glorify Him by whom he was created!

5. “I know whence I came and whither I go.” He who speaks to you in person has what He has not left, and yet He came; for by coming He departed not thence, nor has He forsaken us by returning thither. Why marvel ye? It is God: this cannot be done by man; it cannot be done even by the sun. When it goes to the west it leaves the east, and until it returns to the east, when about to rise, it is not in the east; but our Lord Jesus Christ both comes and is there, both returns and is here. Hear the evangelist himself speaking in another place, and, if thou canst, understand it; if not, believe it: “God,” saith he, “no man hath ever seen, but the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” He 654 John i. 5. said not was in the bosom of the Father, as if by coming He had quitted the Father’s bosom. Here He was speaking, and yet He declared that He was there; and when about to depart hence, what said He? “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”655

6. The witness of the light then is true, whether it be manifesting itself or other things; for without light thou canst not see light, and without light thou canst not see any other thing whatever that is not light. If light is capable of showing other things which are not lights, is it not capable of showing itself? Does not that discover itself, without which other things cannot be made manifest? A prophet spoke a truth; but whence had he it, unless he drew it from the fountain of truth? John spoke a truth; but whence he spoke it, ask himself: “We all,” saith he, “have received of His fullness.” Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ is worthy to bear witness to Himself. But in any case, my brethren, let us who are in the night of this world hear also prophecy with earnest attention: for now our Lord willed to come in humility to our weakness and the deep night-darkness of our hearts: He came as a man to be despised and to be honored, He came to be denied and to be confessed; to be despised and to be denied by the Jews, to be honored and confessed by us: to be judged and to judge; to be judged unjustly, to judge righteously. Such then He came that He behoved to have a lamp to bear witness to Him. For what need was there that John should, as a lamp, bear witness to the day, if the day itself could be looked upon by our weakness? But we could not look upon it: He became weak for the weak; by infirmity He healed infirmity; by mortal flesh He took away the death of the flesh; of His own body He made a salve for our eyes. Since, therefore, the Lord is come, and since we are still in the night of the world, it behoves us to hear also prophecies.

7. For it is from prophecy that we convince gainsaying pagans. Who is Christ? says the pagan. To whom we reply, He whom the prophets foretold. What prophets? asks he. We quote Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and other holy prophets: we tell him that they came long before Christ, by what length of time they preceded His coming. We make this reply then: Prophets came before Him, and they foretold His coming. One of them answers: What prophets? We quote for him those which are daily read to us. And, said he, Who are these prophets? We answer: Those who also foretold the things which we see come to pass. And he urges: You have forged these for yourselves, you have seen them come to pass, and have written them in what books you pleased, as if their coming had been predicted. Here in opposition to pagan enemies the witness of other enemies offers itself. We produce books written by the Jews, and reply: Doubtless both you and they are enemies of our faith. Hence are they scattered among the nations, that we may convince one class of enemies by another. Let the book of Isaiah be produced by the Jews, and let us see if it is not there we read, “He was led as a sheep to be slaughtered, and as a lamb before his shearer was dumb, so He 655 Matt. xxviii. 20. opened not His mouth. In humility His judgment was taken away; by His bruises we are healed: all we as sheep went astray, and He was delivered up for our sins.” 656 Behold one lamp. Let another be produced, let the psalm be opened, and thence, too, let the foretold suffering of Christ be quoted: “They pierced my hands and my feet, they counted all my bones: but they considered me and gazed upon me, they parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast the lot. My praise is with Thee; in the great assembly will I confess to Thee. All the ends of the earth shall be reminded, and be converted to the Lord: all countries of the nations shall worship in His sight; for the kingdom is the Lord’s, and He shall have dominion over the nations.”657 Let one enemy blush, for it is another enemy that gives me the book. But lo, out of the book produced by the one enemy, I have vanquished the other: nor let that same who produced me the book be left; let him produce that by which himself also may be vanquished. I read another prophet, and I find the Lord speaking to the Jews: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord, nor will I accept sacrifice at your hands: for from the rising of the sun even to his going down, a pure sacrifice is offered to my name.”658 Thou dost not come, O Jew, to a pure sacrifice; I prove thee impure.

8. Behold, even lamps bear witness to the day, because of our weakness, for we cannot bear and look at the brightness of the day. In comparison, indeed, with unbelievers, we Christians are even now light; as the apostle says, “For ye were once darkness, but now light in the Lord: walk as children of light:”659 and he says elsewhere, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast away the works of darkness, and put on us the armor of light; let us walk honestly as in the day.”660 Yet that even the day in which we now are is still night, in comparison with the light of that to which we are to come, listen to the Apostle Peter: he says that a voice came to the Lord Christ from the excellent glory, “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. This voice,” said he, “which came from heaven, we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount.” But because we were not there, and have not then heard this voice from heaven, the same Peter says to us, “And we have a more sure word of prophecy.” You have not heard the voice come from heaven, but you have a more sure word of prophecy. For the Lord Jesus Christ, foreseeing that there would be certain wicked men who would calumniate His miracles, by attributing them to magical arts, sent prophets before Him. For, supposing He was a magician, and by magical arts caused that He should be worshipped after His death, was He then a magician before He was born? Hear the prophets, O man dead, and breeding the worms of calumny, hear the prophets: I 656 Isa. liii. 5–8. 657 Ps. xxii. 17–29. 658 Mal. i. 10, 11. 659 Eph. v. 8. 660 Rom. xiii. 12, 13. read, hear them who came before the Lord. “We have,” saith the Apostle Peter, “a more sure word of prophecy, to which ye do well to give heed, as to a lamp in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.”661

9. When, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ shall come, and, as the Apostle Paul also says, will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, that every man may have praise from God;662 then, in presence of such a day, lamps will not be needed: no prophet shall then be read to us, no book of an apostle shall be opened; we shall not require the witness of John, we shall not need the Gospel itself. Accordingly all Scriptures shall be taken out of the way,—which, in the night of this world, were as lamps kindled for us that we might not remain in darkness,—when all these are taken away, that they may not shine as if we needed them, and the men of God, by whom these were ministered to us, shall themselves, together with us, behold that true and clear light. Well, what shall we see after these aids have been removed? Wherewith shall our mind be fed? Wherewith shall our gaze be delighted? Whence shall arise that joy which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath gone up into the heart of man? What shall we see? I beseech you, love with me, by believing run with me: let us long for our home above, let us pant for our home above, let us feel that we are strangers here. What shall we see then? Let the Gospel now tell us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Thou shalt come to the fountain from which a little dew has already besprinkled thee: thou shalt see that very light, from which a ray was sent aslant and through many windings into thy dark heart, in its purity, for the seeing and bearing of which thou art being purified. John himself says, and this I cited yesterday: “Beloved, we are the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be: we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him even as He is.”663 I feel that your affections are being lifted up with me to the things that are above: but the body, which is corrupt, weighs down the soul; and, the earthly habitation depresses the mind while meditating many things.664 I am about to lay aside this book, and you too are going to depart, every man to his own house. It has been good for us to have been in the common light, good to have been glad therein, good to have rejoiced therein; but when we part from one another, let us not depart from Him.

1. In the four Gospels, or rather in the four books of the one Gospel, Saint John the apostle, not undeservedly in respect of his spiritual understanding compared to the eagle, has elevated his preaching higher and far more sublimely than the other three; and in this elevating of it he would have our hearts likewise lifted up. For the other three evangelists walked with the Lord on earth as with a man; concerning His divinity they have said but little; but this evangelist, as if he disdained to walk on earth, just as in the very opening of his discourse he thundered on us, soared not only above the earth and above the whole compass of air and sky, but even above the whole army of angels and the whole order of invisible powers, and reached to Him by whom all things were made; saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” To this so great sublimity of his beginning all the rest of his preaching well agrees; and he has spoken concerning the divinity of the Lord as none other has spoken. What he had drank in, the same he gave forth. For it is not without reason that it is recorded of him in this very Gospel, that at supper he reclined on the Lord’s bosom. From that breast then he drank in secret; but what he drank in secret he gave forth openly, that there may come to all nations not only the incarnation of the Son of God, and His passion and resurrection, but also what He was before His incarnation, the only Son of the Father, the Word of the Father, coeternal with Him that begat, equal with Him by whom He was sent; but yet in that very sending made less, that the Father might be greater.

2. Whatever, then, you have heard stated in lowly manner concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, think of that economy by which He assumed flesh; but whatever you hear, or read, stated in the Gospel concerning Him that is sublime and high above all creatures, and divine, and equal and coeternal with the Father, be sure that this which you read appertains to the form of God, not to the form of the servant. For if you hold this rule, you who can understand it (inasmuch as you are not all able to understand it, but you are all bound to trust it),—if, I say, you hold this rule, as men walking in the light, you will fight against the calumnies of heretical darkness without fear. For there have not been wanting those who, in reading the Gospel, followed only those testimonies that concern the humility of Christ, and have been deaf to those which have declared His divinity; deaf for this reason, that they may be full of evil words. There have likewise been some, who, giving heed only to those which speak of the excellency of the Lord, even though they have read of His mercy in becoming man for our sakes, have not believed the testimonies, but accounted them false and invented by men; contending that our Lord Jesus Christ was only God, not also man. Some in this way, some in that: both in error. But the catholic faith, holding from both the truths which each holds and preaching the truth which each believes, has both understood that Christ is God and also believed Him to be man: for each is written and each is true. Shouldst thou assert that Christ is only God, thou deniest the medicine whereby thou wast healed: shouldst thou assert that Christ is only man, thou deniest the power whereby thou wast created. Hold therefore both. O faithful soul and catholic heart, hold both, believe both, faithfully confess both. Christ is both God and also man. How is Christ God? Equal with the Father, one with the Father. How is Christ man? Born of a virgin, taking upon Himself mortality from man, but not taking iniquity.

3. These Jews then saw the man; they neither perceived nor believed Him to be God: and you have already heard how, among all the rest, they said to Him, “Thou bearest witness of thyself; thy witness is not true.” You have also heard what He said in reply, as it was read to you yesterday, and according to our ability discussed. To-day have been read these words of His, “Ye judge after the flesh.” Therefore it is, saith He, that you say to me, “Thou bearest witness of thyself; thy witness is not true,” because you judge after the flesh, because you perceive not God; the man you see, and by persecuting the man, you offend God hidden in Him. “Ye,” then, “judge after the flesh.” Because I bear witness of myself, I therefore appear to you arrogant. For every man, when he wishes to bear commendatory witness of himself, seems arrogant and proud. Hence it is written, “Let not thy own mouth praise thee, but let thy neighbor’s” mouth praise thee.665 But this was said to man. For we are weak, and we speak to the weak. We can speak the truth, but we can also lie; although we are bound to speak the truth, still we have it in our power to lie when we will. But far be it from us to think that the darkness of falsehood could be found in the splendor of the divine light. He spoke as the light, spoke as the truth; but the light was shining in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not: therefore they judged after the flesh. “Ye,” saith He, “judge after the flesh.”

4. “I judge not any man.” Does not the Lord Jesus Christ, then, judge any man? Is He not the same of whom we confess that He rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, there sits at the right hand of the Father, and thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead? Is not this our faith of which the apostle says, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation?” 666 When, therefore, we confess these things, do we contradict the Lord? We say that He shall come a judge of the quick and the dead, whilst He says Himself, “I judge not any man.” This question may be solved in two ways: Either that we may understand this expression, “I judge not any man,” to mean, I judge not any man now; in accordance with what He says in another place, “I am not come to judge the world, but to save the world;” not denying His judgment here, 665 Prov. xxvii. 2. 666 Rom. x. 10. but deferring it. Or, otherwise, surely that when He said, “Ye judge after the flesh,” He subjoined, “I judge not any man,” in such manner that thou shouldst understand “after the flesh” to complete the sense. Therefore let no scruple of doubt remain in our heart against the faith which we hold and declare concerning Christ as judge. Christ is come, but first to save, then to judge: to adjudge to punishment those who would not be saved; to bring them to life who, by believing, did not reject salvation. Accordingly, the first dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ is medicinal, not judicial; for if He had come to judge first, He would have found none on whom He might bestow the rewards of righteousness. Because, therefore, He saw that all were sinners, and that none was exempt from the death of sin, His mercy had first to be craved, and afterwards His judgment must be executed; for of Him the psalm had sung, “Mercy and judgment will I sing to Thee, O Lord.” 667 Now, He says not “judgment and mercy,” for if judgment had been first, there would be no mercy; but it is mercy first, then judgment. What is the mercy first? The Creator of man deigned to become man; was made what He had made, that the creature He had made might not perish. What can be added to this mercy? And yet He has added thereto. It was not enough for Him to be made man, He added to this that He was rejected of men; it was not enough to be rejected, He was dishonored; it was not enough to be dishonored, He was put to death; but even this was not enough, it was by the death of the cross. For when the apostle was commending to us His obedience even unto death, it was not enough for him to say, “He became obedient unto death;” for it was not unto death of any kind whatever: but he added, “even the death of the cross.”668 Among all kinds of death, there was nothing worse than that death. In short, that wherein one is racked by the most intense pains is called cruciatus, which takes its name from crux, a cross. For the crucified, hanging on the tree, nailed to the wood, were killed by a slow lingering death. To be crucified was not merely to be put to death; for the victim lived long on the cross, not because longer life was chosen, but because death itself was stretched out that the pain might not be too quickly ended. He willed to die for us, yet it is not enough to say this; He deigned to be crucified, became obedient even to the death of the cross. He who was about to take away all death, chose the lowest and worst kind of death: He slew death by the worst of deaths. To the Jews who understood not, it was indeed the worst of deaths, but it was chosen by the Lord. For He was to have that very cross as His sign; that very cross, a trophy, as it were, over the vanquished devil, He was to put on the brow of believers, so that the apostle said, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”669 Nothing was then more intolerable in the flesh, nothing is now more glorious on the brow. 667 Ps. ci. 1. 668 Phil. ii. 8. 669 Gal. vi. 14. What does He reserve for His faithful one, when He has put such honor on the instrument of His own torture? Now is the cross no longer used among the Romans in the punishment of criminals, for where the cross of the Lord came to be honored, it was thought that even a guilty man would be honored if he should be crucified. Hence, He who came for this cause judged no man: He suffered also the wicked. He suffered unjust judgment, that He might execute righteous judgment. But it was of His mercy that He endured unjust judgment. In short, He became so low as to come to the cross; yea, laid aside His power, but published His mercy. Wherein did He lay aside His power? In that He would not come down from the cross, though He had the power to rise again from the sepulchre. Wherein did He publish His mercy? In that, when hanging on the cross, He said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”670 Whether, then, it be that He said, “I judge not any man,” because He had come not to judge the world, but to save the world; or, that, as I have mentioned, when He had said, “Ye judge after the flesh,” He added, “I judge not any man,” for us to understand that Christ judgeth not after the flesh, like as He was judged by men.

5. But that you may know that Christ is judge even now, hear what follows: “And if I judge, my judgment is true.” Behold, thou hast Him as thy judge, but acknowledge Him as thy Saviour, lest thou feel the judge. But why has He said that His judgment is true? “Because,” saith He, “I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.” I have said to you, brethren, that this holy Evangelist John soars exceedingly high: it is with difficulty that he is comprehended. But we need to remind you, beloved, of the deeper mystery of this soaring. Both in the prophet Ezekiel, and in the Apocalypse of this very John whose Gospel this is, there is mentioned a fourfold living creature, having four characteristic faces; that of a man, of an ox, of a lion, and of an eagle. Those who have handled the mysteries of Holy Scripture before us have, for the most part, understood by this living creature, or rather, these four living creatures, the four evangelists. They have understood the lion as put for king, because he appears to be, in a manner, the king of beasts on account of his strength and terrible valor. This character is assigned to Matthew, because in the generations of the Lord he followed the royal line, showing how the Lord was, along the royal line, of the seed of David. But Luke, because he begins with the priesthood of Zacharias, mentioning the father of John the Baptist, is designated the ox; for the ox was an important victim in the sacrifice of the priests. To Mark is deservedly assigned the man Christ, because neither has he said anything of the royal authority, nor did he begin with the priestly function, but only set out with the man Christ. All these have departed but little from the things of earth, that is, from those things which our Lord Jesus Christ performed on earth; of His divinity they have said very little, like men walking with Him on the earth. There remains the eagle; this is John, the preacher of sublime truths, and a contemplator with steady gaze of the inner and eternal 670 Luke xxiii. 34. light. It is said, indeed, that the young eagles are tested by the parent birds in this way: the young one is suspended from the talons of the male parent and directly exposed to the rays of the sun; if it looks steadily at the sun, it is recognized as a true brood; if its eye quivers, it is allowed to drop off, as a spurious brood. Now, therefore, consider how sublime are the things he ought to speak who is compared to the eagle; and yet even we, who creep on the earth, weak and hardly of any account among men, venture to handle and to expound these things; and imagine that we can either apprehend when we meditate them, or be apprehended when we speak.

6. Why have I said this? For perhaps after these words one may justly say to me: Lay aside the book then. Why dost thou take in hand what exceeds thy measure? Why trust thy tongue to it? To this I reply: Many heretics abound; and God has permitted them to abound to this end, that we may not be always nourished with milk and remain in senseless infancy. For inasmuch as they have not understood how the divinity of Christ is set forth to our acceptance, they have concluded according to their will: and by not discerning aright, they have brought in most troublesome questions upon catholic believers; and the hearts of believers began to be disturbed and to waver. Then immediately it became a necessity for spiritual men, who had not only read in the Gospel anything respecting the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, but had also understood it, to bring forth the armor of Christ against the armor of the devil, and with all their might to fight in most open conflict for the divinity of Christ against false and deceitful teachers; lest, while they were silent, others might perish. For whoever have thought either that our Lord Jesus Christ is of another substance than the Father is, or that there is only Christ, so that the same is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; whoever also have chosen to think that He was only man, not God made man, or God in such wise as to be mutable in His Godhead, or God in such wise as not to be man; these have made shipwreck from the faith, and have been cast forth from the harbor of the Church, lest by their inquietude they might wreck the ships in their company. Which thing obliged that even we, though least and as regards ourselves wholly unworthy, but in regard of His mercy set in some account among His stewards, should speak to you what either you may understand and rejoice with me, or, if you cannot yet understand, by believing it you may remain secure in the harbor.

7. I will accordingly speak; let him who can, understand; and let him who cannot understand, believe: yet will I speak what the Lord saith, “Ye judge after the flesh; I judge not any man,” either now, or after the flesh. “But even, if I judge, my judgment is true.” Why is Thy judgment true? “Because I am not alone,” saith He, “but I and the Father that sent me.” What then, O Lord Jesus? If Thou wert alone would Thy judgment be false: and is it because Thou art not alone, but Thou and the Father that sent Thee, that Thou judgest truly? How shall I answer? Let Himself answer: He saith, “My judgment is true.” Why? “Because I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.” If He is with Thee, how has He sent Thee? And has He sent Thee, and yet is He also with Thee? Is it so that having been sent, Thou hast not departed from Him? And didst Thou come to us, and yet abode there? How is this to be believed? how apprehended? To these two questions I answer: Thou sayest rightly, how is it to be apprehended; how believed, thou sayest not rightly. Rather, for that reason is it right to believe it, because it is not immediately to be apprehended; for if it were a thing to be immediately apprehended, there would be no need to believe it, because it would be seen. It is because thou dost not apprehend that thou believest; but by believing thou art made capable of apprehending. For if thou dost not believe, thou wilt never apprehend, since thou wilt remain less capable. Let faith then purify thee, that understanding may fill thee. “My judgment is true,” saith He, “because I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.” Therefore, O Lord our God, Jesus Christ, Thy sending is Thy incarnation. So I see, so I understand: in short, so I believe, in case it may smack of arrogance to say, so I understand. Doubtless the Lord Jesus Christ is even here; rather, was here as to His flesh, is here now as to His Godhead: He was both with the Father and had not left the Father. Hence, in that He is said to have been sent and to have come to us, His incarnation is set forth to us, for the Father did not take flesh.

8. For there are certain heretics called Sabellians, who are also called Patripassians, who affirm that it was the Father Himself that had suffered. Do not thou so affirm, O Catholic; for if thou wilt be a Patripassian, thou wilt not be sane. Understand, then, that the incarnation of the Son is termed the sending of the Son; and do not believe that the Father was incarnate, but do not yet believe that He departed from the incarnate Son. The Son carried flesh, the Father was with the Son. If the Father was in heaven, the Son on earth, how was the Father with the Son? Because both Father and Son were everywhere: for God is not in such manner in heaven as not to be on earth. Hear him who would flee from the judgment of God, and found not a way to flee by: “Whither shall I go,” saith he, “from Thy Spirit; and whither shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there.” The question was about the earth; hear what follows: “If I descend unto hell, Thou art there.”671 If, then, He is said to be present even in hell, what in the universe remains where He is not present? For the voice of God with the prophet is, “I fill heaven and earth.”672 Hence He is everywhere, who is confined by no place. Turn not thou away from Him, and He is with thee. If thou wouldst come to Him, be not slow to love; for it is not with feet but with affections thou runnest. Thou comest while remaining in one place, if thou believest and lovest. Wherefore He is everywhere; and if everywhere, how not also with the Son? Is it so that He is not with the Son, while, if thou believest, He is even with thee?

1. What in the holy Gospel is spoken briefly ought not briefly to be expounded, so that what is read may be understood. The words of the Lord are few, but great; to be valued not by number, but by weight: not to be despised because they are few, but to be sought because they are great. You who were present yesterday have heard, as we discoursed according to our ability from that which the Lord said, “Ye judge after the flesh: I judge not any man. But yet if I judge, my judgment is true; because I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. It is written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me.” Yesterday, as I have said, from these words a discourse was delivered to your ears and to your minds. When the Lord had spoken these words, they who heard, “Ye judge after the flesh,” manifested the truth of what they had heard. For they answered the Lord, as He spoke of God His Father, and said to Him, “Where is thy Father?” The Father of Christ they understood carnally, because they judged the words of Christ after the flesh. But He who spoke was openly flesh, but secretly the Word: man visible, God hidden. They saw the covering, and despised the wearer: they despised because they knew not; knew not, because they saw not; saw not, because they were blind; they were blind, because they believed not.

2. Let us see, then, what answer the Lord made to this. “Where,” say they, “is thy Father?” For we have heard thee say, “I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me:” we see thee alone, we do not see thy Father with thee; how sayest thou that thou art not alone, but that thou art with thy Father? Else show us that thy Father is with thee. And the Lord answered them: Do ye know me, that I should show you the Father? This is indeed what follows; this is what He answered in His own words, the exposition of which we have already premised. For see what He said, “Ye neither know me nor my Father: if ye knew me, ye would perhaps know my Father also.” Ye say then, “Where is thy Father?” As if already ye knew me; as if what you see were all that I am. Therefore because ye know not me, I do not show you my Father. Ye suppose me, in fact, to be a man; hence ye seek a man for my father, because “ye judge after the flesh.” But because, according to what you see, I am one thing, and another thing according to what you see not, and that I as hidden from you speak of my Father as hidden, it is requisite that you should first know me, and then ye know my Father also.

3. “For if ye knew me, ye would perhaps know my Father also.” He who knows all things is not in doubt when He says perhaps, but rebuking. Now see how this very word perhaps, which seems to be a word of doubting, may be spoken chidingly. Yea, a word expressive of doubt it is when used by man, for man doubts because he knows not; but when a word of doubting is spoken by God, from whom surely nothing is hid, it is unbelief that is reproved by that doubting, not the Godhead merely expressing an opinion. For men sometimes chidingly express doubt concerning things which they hold certain; that is, use a word of doubting, while in their heart they doubt not: just as thou wouldst say to thy slave, if thou wert angry with him, “Thou despisest me; but consider, perhaps I am thy master.” Hence also the apostle, speaking to some who despised him, says: “And I think that I also have the Spirit of God.” 679 When he says, “I think,” he seems to doubt; but he is rebuking, not doubting. And in another place the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, rebuking the future unbelief of mankind, saith: “When the Son of man cometh, will He, thinkest thou, find faith on the earth?”680

4. You now, as I think, understand how the word perhaps is used here, in case any weigher of words and poiser of syllables, as if to show his knowledge of Latin, finds fault with a word which the Word of God spoke; and by blaming the Word of God, remain not eloquent, but mute. For who is there that speaks as doth the Word which was in the beginning with God? Do not consider these words as we use them, and from these wish to measure that Word which is God. Thou hearest the Word indeed, and despisest it; hear God and fear Him: “In the beginning was the Word.” Thou referrest to the usage of thy conversation, and sayest within thyself, What is a word? What mighty thing is a word? It sounds and passes away; after beating the air, it strikes the ear and is no more. Hear further: “The Word was with God;” remained, did not by sounding pass away. Perhaps thou still despisest it: “The Word was God.” With thyself, O man, a word in thy heart is a different thing from sound; but the word that is with thee, in order to pass to me, requires sound for a vehicle as it were. It takes to itself sound, mounts it as a vehicle, runs through the air, comes to me and yet does not leave thee. But the sound, in order to come to me, left thee and yet did not stay with me. Now has the word that was in thy heart also passed away with the passing sound? Thou didst speak thy thought; and, that the thought which was hid with thee might come to me, thou didst sound syllables; the sound of the syllables conveyed thy thought to my ear; through my ear thy thought descended into my heart, the intermediate sound flew away: but that word which took to itself sound was with thee before thou didst sound it, and is with me, because thou didst sound it, without quitting thee. Consider this, thou nice weigher of sounds, whoever thou be. Thou despisest the Word of God, thou who comprehendest not the word of man.

5. He, then, by whom all things were made knows all things, and yet He rebukes by doubting: “If ye knew me ye would perhaps know my Father also.” He rebukes unbelievers. He spoke a like sentence to the disciples, but there is not a word of doubting in it, because there was no occasion to rebuke unbelief. For this, “If ye knew me, ye would perhaps know my Father also,” which He said to the Jews, He said also to the disciples, when Philip asked, 679 1 Cor. vii. 40. 680 Luke xviii. 8. or rather, demanded of Him, saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us:” just as if he said, We already know Thee even ourselves; Thou hast been apparent to us; we have seen Thee; Thou hast deigned to choose us; we have followed Thee, have seen Thy marvels, heard Thy words of Salvation, have taken Thy precepts upon us, we hope in Thy promises: Thou hast deigned to confer much upon us by Thy very presence: but still, while we know Thee, and we do not yet know the Father, we are inflamed with desire to see Him whom we do not yet know; and thus, be cause we know Thee, but it is not enough until we know the Father, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. And the Lord, that they might understand that they knew not what they thought they did already know, said, “Am I so long time with you, and ye know me not, Philip? he who hath seen me hath seen the Father.”681 Has this sentence a word of doubting in it? Did He say, He that hath seen me hath perhaps seen the Father? Why not? Because it was a believer that listened to Him, not a persecutor of the faith: hence did the Lord not rebuke, but teach. “Whoso hath seen me hath seen the Father also:” and here, “If ye knew me, ye would know my Father also,” let us remove the word which indicates the unbelief of the hearers, and it is the same sentence.

6. Yesterday we commended it to your consideration, beloved, and said that the sentences of the Evangelist John, in which he narrates to us what he learned from the Lord, had not required to be discussed, were that possible, except the inventions of heretics had compelled us. Yesterday, then, we briefly intimated to you, beloved, that there are heretics who are called Patripassians, or Sabellians after their founder: these say that the same is the Father who is the Son; the names different, but the person one. When He wills, say they, He is Father; when He wills, He is Son: still He is one. There are likewise other heretics who are called Arians. They indeed confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only Son of the Father; the one, Father of the Son; the other, Son of the Father; that He who is Father is not Son, nor He who is Son is Father; they confess that the Son was begotten, but deny His equality. We, namely, the catholic faith, coming from the doctrine of the apostles planted in us, received by a line of succession, to be transmitted sound to posterity,—the catholic faith, I say, has, between both those parties, that is, between both errors, held the truth. In the error of the Sabellians, He is only one; the Father and Son is the same person: in the error of the Arians, the Father and the Son are indeed different persons; but the Son is not only a different person, but different in nature. Thou midway between these, what sayest thou? Thou hast shut out the Sabellian, shut out the Arian also. The Father is Father, the Son is Son; another person, not another in nature; for, “I and the Father are one,” which, so far as I could, I pressed on your thoughts yesterday. When he hears that word, we are, let the Sabellian go away confounded; when he hears the word one, let the Arian go away confounded. Let the catholic steer the bark of his faith between both, since in both he must be on his guard 681 John xiv. 8. against shipwreck. Say thou, then, what the Gospel saith, “I and the Father are one.” Not different in nature, because one; not one person, because are.

7. A little before He said, “My judgment is true; because I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me:” as if He said, The reason why my judgment is true is, because I am the Son of God, because I speak the truth, because I am truth itself. Those men, understanding Him carnally, said, “Where is thy Father?” Now hear, O Arian: “Ye neither know me, nor my Father;” because, “If ye knew me, ye would know my Father also.” What doth this mean, except “I and the Father are one”? When thou seest some person like some other,—give heed, beloved, it is a common remark; let not that appear to you difficult which you see to be customary,—when, I say, thou seest some person like another, and thou knowest the person to whom he is like, thou sayest in wonder, “How like this person is to that!” Thou wouldst not say this unless there were two. Here one who does not know the person to whom thou sayest the other is like remarks, “Is he so like him?” And thou answerest him: What, dost thou not know that person? Saith he, “No, I do not.” Immediately thou, in order to make known to him the person whom he does not know by means of the person whom he observes before him, answerest, saying, Having seen this man, thou hast seen the other. Thou didst not, surely, assert that they are one person in saying this, or that they are not two; but made such answer because of the likeness: “If thou knowest the one, thou knowest the other; for they are very like, and there is no difference whatever between them.” Hence also the Lord saith, “If ye knew me, ye would know my Father also;” not that the Son is the Father but like the Father. Let the Arian blush. Thanks be to the Lord that even the Arian is separate from the Sabellian error, and is not a Patripassian: he does not affirm that the Father assumed flesh and came to men, that the Father suffered, rose again, and somehow ascended to Himself; this he does not affirm; he acknowledges with me the Father to be Father, the Son to be Son. But, O brother, thou hast escaped that shipwreck, why go to the other? Father is Father, Son is Son; why dost thou affirm that the Son is unlike, that He is different, another substance? If He were unlike, would He say to His disciples, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”? Would He say to the Jews, “If ye knew me, ye would know my Father also”? How would this be true, unless that other was also true, “I and the Father are one”?

8. “These words spake Jesus in the treasury, speaking in the temple:” great boldness, without fear. For He could not suffer if He did not will it, since He were not born if He did not will it. What follows then? “And no man laid hold of Him, because His hour was not yet come.” Some, again, when they hear this, believe that the Lord Christ was subject to fate, and say: Behold, Christ is held by fate! O, if thy heart were not fatuous, thou wouldst not believe in fate. If fate, as some understand it, is derived from fando, that is from speaking, how can the Word of God be held by fate, whilst all things that are made are in the Word itself? For God has not ordained anything which He did not know beforehand; that which was made was in His Word. The world was made; both was made and was there. How both was made and was there? Because the house which the builder rears, was previously in his art; and there, a better house, without age, without decay: however, to show forth his art, he makes a house; and so, in a manner, a house comes forth from a house; and if the house should fall, the art remains. So were all things that are made with the Word of God; because God made all things in wisdom,682 and all that He made were known to Him: for He did not learn because He made, but made because He knew. To us they are known, because they are made: to Him, if they had not been known, they would not have been made. Therefore the Word went before. And what was before the Word? Nothing at all. For were there anything before it, it would not have been said, “In the beginning was the Word;” but, In the beginning was the Word made. In short, what says Moses concerning the world? “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth.” Made what was not: well, if He made what was not, what was there before? “In the beginning was the Word.” And whence came heaven and earth? “All things were made by Him.” Dost thou then put Christ under fate? Where are the fates? In heaven, sayest thou, in the order and changes of the stars. How then can fate rule Him by whom the heavens and the stars were made; whilst thy own will, if thou thinkest rightly, transcends even the stars? Or, because thou knowest that Christ’s flesh was under heaven, is that the reason why thou thinkest that Christ’s power was put under the heavens?

9. Hear, thou fool: “His hour was not yet come;” not the hour in which He should be forced to die, but that in which He would deign to be put to death. For Himself knew when He should die: He considered all things that were foretold of Him, and awaited all to be finished that was foretold to be before His suffering; that when all should be fulfilled, then should come His suffering in set order, not by fatal necessity. In short, hear that you may prove. Among the rest that was prophesied of Him, it is also written: “They gave me gall for meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”683 How this happened, we know from the Gospel. First, they gave Him gall; He received it, tasted it, and spat it out. Thereafter, as He hung on the cross, that all that was foretold might be fulfilled, He said, “I thirst.” They took a sponge filled with vinegar, bound it to a reed, and put it to His mouth; He received it, and said, “It is finished.” What did that mean? All things which were prophesied before my death are completed, then what do I here any longer? In a word, when He said “It is finished, He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.” Did the thieves, who were nailed beside Him, expire when they would? They were held by the bonds of flesh, for they were not the creators of the flesh; fixed by nails, they were a long time tormented, because they had not lordship over their weakness. The Lord, however, when He would, took flesh in a virgin’s 682 Ps. civ. 24. 683 Ps. lxix. 22. womb: came forth to men when He would; lived among men so long as He would; and when He would He quitted the flesh. This is the part of power, not of necessity. This hour, then, He awaited; not the fated, but the fitting and voluntary hour; that all might first be fulfilled which behoved to be fulfilled before His decease. How could he have been under necessity of fate, when He said in another place, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again: no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself and take it again?” 684 He showed this power when the Jews sought Him. “Whom seek ye?” saith He. “Jesus,” said they. And He answered, “I am He.” When they heard this voice, “they went back and fell to the ground.”685

10. Says one, If he had this power, why, when the Jews insulted him on the cross and said, “If he be the Son of God let him come down from the cross,” did He not come down, to show them His power by coming down? Because He was teaching us patience, therefore He deferred the demonstration of His power. For if He came down, moved as it were at their words, He would be thought to have been overcome by the sting of their insults. He did not come down; there He remained fixed, to depart when He would. For what great matter was it for Him to descend from the cross, when He could rise again from the sepulchre? Let us, then, to whom this is ministered, understand that the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, then concealed, will be made manifest in the judgment, of which it is said, “God will come manifest; our God, and He will not be silent.”686 Why is it said, “will come manifest”? Because He, our God,—namely, Christ,—came hidden, will come manifest. “And will not be silent:” why this “will not be silent”? Because at first He did keep silence. When? When He was judged; that this, too, might be fulfilled which the prophet had foretold: “As a sheep He was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.”687 He would not have suffered did He not will to suffer: did He not suffer, that blood had not been shed; if that blood were not shed, the world would not be redeemed. Therefore let us give thanks to the power of His divinity, and to the compassion of His infirmity; both concerning the hidden power which the Jews did not recognize, whence it is now said to them, “Ye neither know me nor my Father,” and also concerning the flesh assumed, which the Jews did not recognize, and yet knew His lineage: whence He said to them elsewhere, “Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am.” Let us know both in Christ, both wherein He is equal to the Father and wherein the Father is greater than He. That is the Word, this is the flesh; that is God, this is man; but yet Christ is one, God and man.

1. The lesson of the holy Gospel which preceded to-day’s had concluded thus: that “the Lord spake, teaching in the treasury,” what it pleased Him, and what you have heard; “and no one laid hands on Him, for His hour was not yet come.”688 Accordingly, on the Lord’s day we made our subject of discourse what He Himself thought fit to give us. We indicated to your Charity why it was said, “His hour was not yet come,” lest any in their impiety should have the effrontery to suspect Christ as laid under some fatal necessity. For the hour was not yet come when by His own appointment, in accordance with what was predicted regarding Him, He should not be forced to die unwillingly, but be ready to be slain.

2. But of His own passion itself, which lay not in any necessity He was under, but in His own power, all that He said in His discourse to the Jews was, “I go away.” For to Christ the Lord’s death was His proceeding to the place whence He had come, and from which He had never departed. “I go away,” said He, “and ye shall seek me,” not from any longing for me, but in hatred. For after His removal from human sight, He was sought for both by those who hated Him and those who loved Him; by the former in a spirit of persecution, by the latter with the desire of having Him. In the Psalms the Lord Himself says by the prophet, “A place of refuge hath failed me, and there is none that seeketh after my life;”689 and again He says in another place in the Psalms, “Let them be confounded and ashamed who seek after my life.”690 He blamed the former for not seeking, He condemned the latter because they did. For it is wrong not to seek the life of Christ, that is, in the way the disciples sought it; and it is wrong to seek the life of Christ, that is, in the way the Jews sought it: for the former sought to possess it, these latter to destroy it. Accordingly, because these men sought it thus in a wrong way, with a perverted heart, what next did He add? “Ye shall seek me, and”—not to let you suppose that ye will seek me for good—“ye shall die in your sin.” This comes of seeking Christ wrongly, to die in one’s sin; this of hating Him, through whom alone salvation could be found. For, while men whose hope is in God ought not to render evil even for evil, these men were rendering evil for good. The Lord therefore announced to them beforehand, and in His foreknowledge uttered the sentence, that they should die in their sin. And then He adds, “Whither I go, ye cannot come.” He said the same to the disciples also in another place; and yet He said not to them, “Ye shall die in your sin.” But what did He say? The same as to these men: “Whither I go, ye cannot come.”691 He did not 688 Chap. viii. 20. 689 Ps. cxlii. 4. 690 Ps. xl. 14. 691 Chap. xiii. 33. take away hope, but foretold delay. For at the time when the Lord spake this to the disciples, they were not able to come whither He was going, yet were they to come afterwards; but these men never, to whom in His foreknowledge He said, “Ye shall die in your sin.”

3. But on hearing these words, as is usual with those whose thoughts are carnal, who judge after the flesh, and hear and apprehend everything in a carnal way, they said, “Will he kill himself because he said, Whither I go ye cannot come.” Foolish words, and overflowing with stupidity! For why could they not go whither He would have proceeded had He killed Himself? Were not they themselves to die? What, then, means, “Will he kill himself because he said, Whither I go ye cannot come?” If He spake of man’s death, what man is there that does not die? Therefore, by “whither I go” He meant, not the going to death, but whither He was going Himself after death. Such, then, was their answer, because they did not understand.

4. And what said the Lord to those who savored of the earth? “And He said unto them, Ye are from beneath.” For this cause ye savor of the earth, because ye lick dust like serpents. Ye eat earth! What does it mean? Ye feed on earthly things, ye delight in earthly things, ye gape after earthly things, ye have no heart for what is above. “Ye are from beneath: I am from above. Ye are of this world: I am not of this world.” For how could He be of the world, by whom the world was made? All that are of the world come after the world, because the world preceded; and so man is of the world. But Christ was first, and then the world; and since Christ was before the world, before Christ there was nothing: because “In the beginning was the Word; all things were made by Him.”692 He, therefore, was of that which is above. But of what that is above? Of the air? Perish the thought! there the birds wing their flight. Of the sky that we see? Again I say, Perish the thought! it is there that the stars and sun and moon revolve. Of the angels? Neither is this to be understood: by Him who made all things were the angels also made. Of what, then, above is Christ? Of the Father Himself. Nothing is above that God who begat the Word equal with Himself, co-eternal with Himself, onlybegotten, timeless, that by Him time’s own foundations should be laid. Understand, then, Christ as from above, so as in thy thought to get beyond everything that is made,—the whole creation together, every material body, every created spirit, everything in any way subject to change: rise above all, as John rose, in order to reach this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

5. Therefore said He, “I am from above. Ye are of this world: I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins.” He has explained to us, brethren, what He wished to be understood by “ye are of this world.” He said therefore in fact, “Ye are of this world,” because they were sinners, because they were unrighteous, because they were unbelieving, because they savored of the earthly. For what is your opinion as regards 692 Chap. i. 1, 3. the holy apostles? What difference was there between the Jews and the apostles? As great as between darkness and light, as between faith and unbelief, as between piety and impiety, as between hope and despair, as between love and avarice: surely the difference was great. What then, because there was such a difference, were the apostles not of the world? If thy thoughts turn to the manner of their birth, and whence they came, inasmuch as all of them had come from Adam, they were of this world. But what said the Lord Himself to them? “I have chosen you out of the world.”693 Those, then, who were of the world, became not of the world, and began to belong to Him by whom the world was made. But these men continued to be of the world, to whom it was said, “Ye shall die in your sins.”

6. Let none then, brethren, say, I am not of this world. Whoever thou art as a man, thou art of this world; but He who made the world came to thee, and delivered thee from this world. If the world delights thee, thou wishest always to be unclean (immundus); but if this world no longer delight thee, thou art already clean (mundus). And yet, if through some infirmity the world still delight thee, let Him who cleanseth (mundat) dwell in thee, and thou too shalt be clean.694 But if thou art once clean, thou wilt not continue in the world; neither wilt thou hear what was heard by the Jews, “Ye shall die in your sins.” For we are all born with sin; we have all in living added to that wherein we were born, and have since become more of the world than when we were born of our parents. And where should we be, had He not come, who was wholly free from sin, to expiate all sin? And so, because in Him the Jews believed not, they deservedly heard the sentence, “Ye shall die in your sins;” for in no way could ye, who were born with sin, be without sin; and yet, said He, if ye believe in me, although it is still true that ye were born with sin, yet in your sin ye shall not die. The whole misery, then, of the Jews was just this, not to have sin, but to die in their sins. From this it is that every Christian ought to seek to escape; because of this we have recourse to baptism; on this account do those whose lives are in danger from sickness or any other cause become anxious for help; for this also is the sucking child carried by his mother with pious hands to the church, that he may not go out into the world without baptism, and die in the sin wherein he was born. Most wretched surely the condition and miserable the lot of these men, who heard from those truth-speaking lips, “Ye shall die in your sins!”

7. But He explains whence this should befall them: “For if ye believe not that I am [He], ye shall die in your sins.” I believe, brethren, that among the multitude who listened to the Lord, there were those also who should yet believe. But against all, as it were, had that most severe sentence gone forth, “Ye shall die in your sin;” and thereby even from those who should yet believe had hope been withdrawn: the others were roused to fury, they to fear; 693 Chap. xv. 19. 694 There is a play here on the words mundus, the world, and mundus, clean, with its compound immundus, and its cognate verb mundare. Such plays are frequent in St. Augustin.—Tr. yea, to more than fear, they were brought now to despair. But He revived their hope; for He added, “If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins.” Therefore if ye do believe that I am, ye shall not die in your sins. Hope was restored to the desponding, the sleeping were aroused, their hearts got a fresh awakening; and thereafter very many believed, as the Gospel itself attests in the sequel. For members of Christ were there, who had not yet become attached to the body of Christ; and among that people by whom He was crucified, by whom He was hanged on a tree, by whom when hanging He was mocked, by whom He was wounded with the spear, by whom gall and vinegar were given Him to drink, were the members of Christ, for whose sake He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And what will a convert not be forgiven, if the shedding of Christ’s blood is forgiven? What murderer need despair, if he was restored to hope by whom even Christ was slain? After this many believed; they were presented with Christ’s blood as a gift, that they might drink it for their salvation, rather than be held guilty of shedding it. Who can despair? And if the thief was saved on the cross,—a murderer shortly before, a little afterwards accused, convicted, condemned, hanged, delivered,—wonder not. The place of his conviction was that of his condemnation; while that of his conversion was the place also of his deliverance. 695 Among this people, then, to whom the Lord was speaking, were those who should yet die in their sin: there were those also who should yet believe on Him who spake, and find deliverance from all their sin.

8. But look at this which is said by Christ the Lord: “If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins.” What is this, “If ye believe not that I am?” “I am” what? There is nothing added; and because He added nothing, He left much to be inferred. For He was expected to say what He was, and yet He said it not. What was He expected to say? Perhaps, “If ye believe not that I am” Christ; “if ye believe not that I am” the Son of God; “if ye believe not that I am” the Word of the Father; “if ye believe not that I am” the founder of the world; “if ye believe not that I am” the former and re-former, the creator and re-creator, the maker and re-maker of man;—“if ye believe not that I am” this, “ye shall die in your sins.” There is much implied in His only saying “I am;” for so also had God said to Moses, “I am who am.” Who can adequately express what that am means? God by His angel sent His servant Moses to deliver His people out of Egypt (you have read and know what you now hear; but I recall it to your minds); He sent him trembling, self-excusing, but obedient. And while thus excusing himself, he said to God, whom he understood to be speaking in the person of the angel: If the people say to me, And who is the God that hath sent thee? what shall I say to them? 695 Luke xviii. 34–43. And the Lord answered him, “I am who am;” and added, “Thou shalt say to the children of Israel, He who is hath sent me to you.” There also He says not, I am God; or, I am the framer of the world; or, I am the creator of all things; or, I am the multiplier of the very people to be delivered: but only this, “I am who am;” and, “Thou shall say to the children of Israel, He who is.” He added not, Who is your God, who is the God of your fathers; but said only this: “He who is hath sent me to you.” Perhaps it was too much even for Moses himself, as it is too much for us also, and much more so for us, to understand the meaning of such words, “I am who am;” and, “He who is hath sent me to you.” And supposing that Moses comprehended it, when would those to whom he was sent comprehend it? The Lord therefore put aside what man could not comprehend, and added what he could; for He said also besides, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”696 This thou canst comprehend; for “I am who am,” what mind can comprehend?

9. What then of us? Shall we venture to say anything on such words, “I am who am;” or rather on this, that you have heard the Lord saying, “If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins”? Shall I venture with these feeble and scarcely existing powers of mine to discuss the meaning of that which Christ the Lord hath said, “If ye believe not that I am”? I shall venture to ask the Lord Himself. Listen to me as one asking rather than discussing, inquiring rather than assuming, learning rather than teaching, and fail not yourselves also to be asking with me or through me. The Lord Himself, who is everywhere, is also at hand. Let Him hear the feeling that prompts to ask, and grant the fruit of understanding. For in what words, even were it so that I comprehend something, can I convey to your hearts what I comprehend? What voice is adequate? what eloquence sufficient? what powers of intelligence? what faculty of utterance?

10. I shall speak, then, to our Lord Jesus Christ; I shall speak and may He be pleased to hear me. I believe He is present, I am fully assured of it; for He Himself has said, “Lo, I am with you even to the end of the world.”697 O Lord our God, what is that which Thou saidst, “If ye believe not that I am”? For what is there that belongs not to the things Thou hast made? Does not heaven so belong? Does not the earth? Does not everything in earth and heaven? Does not man himself to whom Thou speakest? Does not the angel whom Thou sendest? If all these are things made by Thee, what is that existence698 Thou hast retained as something exclusively Thine own, which Thou hast given to none besides, that Thou mightest be such Thyself alone? For how do I hear “I am who am,” as if there were none besides? and how do I hear “If ye believe not that I am”? For had they no existence who heard Him? Yea, though they were sinners, they were men. What then can I do? What that 696 Ex. iii. 13–15. 697 Matt. xxviii. 20. 698 Esse. existence is, let Him tell my heart, let Him tell, let Him declare it within; let the inner man hear, the mind apprehend this true existence; for such existence is always unvarying in character.699 For a thing, anything whatever (I have begun as it were to dispute, and have left off inquiring. Perhaps I wish to speak what I have heard. May He grant enlargement to my hearing, and to yours, while I speak);—for anything, whatever in short be its excellence, if it is changeable, does not truly exist; for there is no true existence wherever non-existence has also a place. For whatever can be changed, so far as changed, it is not that which was: if it is no longer what it was, a kind of death has therein taken place; something that was there has been eliminated, and exists no more. Blackness has died out in the silvery locks of the patriarch, comeliness in the body of the careworn and crooked old man, strength in the body of the languishing, the previous standing posture in the body of one walking, walking in the body of one standing, walking and standing in the body of one reclining, speech in the tongue of the silent;—whatever changes, and is what it was not, I see there a kind of life in that which is, and death in that which was. In fine, when we say of one deceased, Where is that person? we are answered, He was. O Truth, it is thou [alone] that truly art! For in all actions and movements of ours, yea, in every activity of the creature, I find two times, the past and the future. I seek for the present, nothing stands still: what I have said is no longer present; what I am going to say is not yet come: what I have done is no longer present; what I am going to do is not yet come: the life I have lived is no longer present; the life I have still to live is not yet come. Past and future I find in every creature-movement: in truth, which is abiding, past and future I find not, but the present alone, and that unchangeably, which has no place in the creature. Sift the mutations of things, thou wilt find was and will be: think on God, thou wilt find the is, where was and will be cannot exist. To be so then thyself, rise beyond the boundaries of time. But who can transcend the powers of his being? May He raise us thither who said to the Father, “I will that they also be with me where I am.” And so, in making this promise, that we should not die in our sins, the Lord Jesus Christ, I think, said nothing else by these words, “If ye believe not that I am;” yea, by these words I think He meant nothing else than this, “If ye believe not that I am” God, “ye shall die in your sins.” Well, God be thanked that He said, “If ye believe not,” and did not say, If ye comprehend not. For who can comprehend this? Or is it so, since I have ventured to speak and you have seemed to understand, that you have indeed comprehended somewhat of a subject so unspeakable? If then thou comprehendest not, faith sets thee free. Therefore also the Lord said not, If ye comprehend not that I am; but said what they were capable of attaining, “If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins.”

11. And savoring as these men always did of the earth, and ever hearing and answering according to the flesh, what did they say to Him? “Who art thou?” For when thou saidst, 699 Eodem modo. “If ye believe not that I am,” thou didst not tell us what thou wert. Who art thou, that we may believe? He answered “The Beginning.” Here is the existence that always is. The beginning cannot be changed: the beginning is self-abiding and all-originating; that is, the beginning, to which it has been said, “But thou Thyself art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.”700 “The beginning,” He said, “for so I also speak to you.” Believe me to be the beginning, that ye may not die in your sins. For just as if by saying, “Who art thou?” they had said nothing else than this, What shall we believe thee to be? He replied, “The beginning;” that is, Believe me to be the “beginning.” For in the Greek expression we discern what we cannot in the Latin. For in Greek the word “beginning” (principium, ἀρχή), is of the feminine gender, just as with us “law” (lex) is of the feminine gender, while it is of the masculine (νόμος) with them; or as “wisdom” (sapientia, σοφία) is of the feminine gender with both. It is the custom of speech, therefore, in different languages to vary the gender of words, because in things themselves there is no place for the distinction of sex. For wisdom is not really female, since Christ is the Wisdom of God,701 and Christ is termed of the masculine gender, wisdom of the feminine. When then the Jews said, “Who art thou?” He, who knew that there were some there who should yet believe, and therefore had said, Who art thou? that so they might come to know what they ought to believe regarding Him, replied, “The beginning:” not as if He said, I am the beginning; but as if He said, Believe me to be the beginning. Which, as I said, is quite evident in the Greek language, where beginning (ἀρχή) is of the feminine gender.702 Just as if He had wished to say that He was the Truth, and to their question, “Who art thou?” had answered, Veritatem703the Truth;when to the words, “Who art thou?” He evidently ought to have replied, Veritas704 the Truth; that is, I am the Truth. But His answer had a deeper meaning, when He saw that they had put the question, “Who art thou?” in such a way as to mean, Having heard from thee, “If ye believe not that I am,” what shall we believe thee to be? To this He replied, “The beginning:” as if He said, Believe me to be the beginning. And He added “for as such I also speak to you;” that is, having humbled myself on your account, I have condescended to such words. For if the beginning as it is in itself had remained so with the Father, as not to receive the form of a servant and speak as man with men; how could they have believed in Him, since their weak hearts could not have heard the Word intelligently without some voice that would appeal 700 Ps. cii. 27. 701 1 Cor. i. 24. 702 The Greek is τὴν ἀρχή;ν, which to some has here the sound of an adverb, like the Latin principio and primum. So at least it sounded to Chrysostom. But Augustin’s interpretation is favored by Ambrose, Bernard, etc. 703 In the accusative case. 704 In the nominative case. to their senses? Therefore, said He, believe me to be the beginning; for, that you may believe, I not only am, but also speak to you.705 But on this subject I have still much to say to you; may it therefore please your Charity that we reserve what remains, and by His gracious aid deliver it tomorrow.

1. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He had addressed to the Jews, so regulating His discourse that the blind saw not, and believers’ eyes were opened, are these, which have been read to-day from the holy Gospel: “Then said the Jews, Who art thou?” Because the Lord had said before, “If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins.”706 To this accordingly they rejoined, “Who art thou?” as if seeking to know on whom they ought to believe, so as not to die in their sin. He replied to those who asked Him: “Who art thou?” by saying, “The beginning, for [so] also I speak to you.” If the Lord has called Himself the beginning, it may be inquired whether the Father also is the beginning. For if the Son who has a Father is the beginning, how much more easily must God the Father be understood as the beginning, who has indeed the Son whose Father He is, but has no one from whom He Himself proceedeth? For the Son is the Son of the Father, and the Father certainly is the Father of the Son; but the Son is called God of God,—the Son is called Light of Light; the Father is called Light, but not, of Light,—the Father is called God, but not, of God. If, then, God of God, Light of Light, is the beginning, how much more easily may we understand as such that Light, from whom the Light cometh, and God, of whom is God? It seems, therefore, absurd, dearly beloved, to call the Son the beginning, and not to call the Father the beginning also.

2. But what shall we do? Are there, then, two beginnings? Let us beware of saying so. What then, if both the Father is the beginning and the Son the beginning, how are there not two beginnings? In the same way that we call the Father God, and the Son God, and yet say not that there are two Gods; and yet He who is the Father is not the Son, He who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, is neither the Father nor the Son. Although, then, as Catholic ears have been taught in the bosom of mother Church, neither He who is the Father is the Son, nor He who is the Son is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit, of the Father and of the Son, either the Son or the Father, yet we say not that there are three Gods; although, if we are asked of each apart, we must, of whichever we are questioned, confess that He is God.

3. But all this seems absurd to those who drag up familiar things to a level with things little known, visible things with invisible, and compare the creature to the Creator. For unbelievers sometimes question us and say: Whom you call the Father, do you call him God? We answer, God. Whom you call the Son, do you call him God? We answer, God. Whom you call the Holy Spirit, do you call him God? We answer, God. Then, say they, are the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit three Gods? We answer, No. They are confounded, because they are not enlightened; they have their heart shut up, because they want the key 706 Chap. viii. 25, 24. of faith. Let us then, brethren, by an antecedent faith that heals the eye of our heart, receive without obscurity what we understand,—and what we understand not, believe without hesitation; let us not quit the foundation of faith in order to reach the summit of perfection. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God: and yet He is not the Father who is the Son, nor He the Son who is the Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, is neither the Father nor the Son. The Trinity is one God. The Trinity is one eternity, one power, one majesty;—three, but not three Gods. Let not the reviler answer me: “Three what, then? For,” he adds, “if there are three, you must say, three what?” I reply: The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. “See,” he says, “you have named three; but express what the three are?” Nay, count them yourself; for I make out three when I say, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For the Father is God as respects Himself, but [He is] the Father as respects the Son; the Son is God as respects Himself, but He is the Son as regards the Father.

4. What I say you may gather from daily analogies. So it is with one man and another, if the one be a father, the other his son. He is man as regards himself, but a father as regards his son; and the son man as respects himself, but a son as respects his father. For father is a name given relatively, and so with son; but these are two men. And certainly God the Father is Father in a relative sense, that is, in relation to the Son; and God the Son is Son relatively, that is, in relation to the Father; but not as the former are two men are these two Gods. Why is it not so here? Because that belongs to one sphere and this to another; for this is divine. There is here something ineffable which cannot be explained in words, that there should both be, and not be, number. For see if there appear not a kind of number, Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost—the Trinity. If three, three what? Here number fails. And so God neither keeps apart from number, nor is comprehended by number. Because there are three, there is a kind of number. If you ask three what, number ceases. Hence it is said, “Great is our Lord, and great His power; and of His understanding there is no number.”707 When you have begun to reflect, you begin to number; when you have numbered, you cannot tell what you have numbered. The Father is Father, the Son is Son, the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. What are these three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Are They not three Gods? No. Are They not three Almighties? No. Not three Creators of the world? No. Is the Father then almighty? Manifestly almighty. And is the Son then not almighty? Clearly the Son is also almighty. And is the Holy Spirit then not almighty? He, too, is almighty. Are there then three Almighties? No; only one Almighty. Only in Their relation to each other do They suggest number, not in Their essential existence. For though God the Father is, as respects Himself, God along with the Son and the Holy Spirit, there are not three Gods; and, though as respects Himself He is omnipotent, as well as the Son and the Holy Spirit, there are not 707 Ps. cxlvii. 5 (marg.). three omnipotents; for in truth He is the Father not in respect to Himself, but to the Son; nor is the Son so in respect to Himself, but to the Father; nor is the Spirit so as regards Himself, in as far as He is called the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. I have no name to give the three, save the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, one Almighty. And so one beginning.

5. Take an illustration from the Holy Scriptures, whereby you may in some measure comprehend what I am saying. After our Lord Jesus Christ rose again, and was pleased to ascend into heaven, at the end of ten days He sent from thence the Holy Spirit, by whom those who were present in that one chamber were filled, and began to speak in the languages of all nations. The Lord’s murderers, terrified by the miracle, were pricked to the heart and sorrowed; sorrowing, were changed; and being changed, believed. There were added to the Lord’s body, that is, to the number of believers, three thousand people. And so also by the working of another miracle there were added other five thousand. A considerable community was created, in which all, receiving the Holy Spirit, by whom spiritual love was kindled, were by their very love and fervor of spirit welded into one, and began in the very unity of fellowship to sell all that they had, and to lay the price at the apostles’ feet, that distribution might be made to every one as each had need. And the Scripture says this of them, that “they were of one soul and one heart toward God.”708 Give heed then, brethren, and from this acknowledge the mystery of the Trinity, how it is we say, There is both the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and yet there is one God. See! there were so many thousands of these, and yet there was one heart; there were so many thousands, and one soul. But where? In God. How much more so God Himself? Do I err at all in word when I call two men two souls, or three men three souls, or many men many souls? Surely I speak correctly. Let them approach God, and one soul belongs to all. If by approaching God many souls by love become one soul, and many hearts one heart, what of the very fountain of love in the Father and Son? Is it not still more so here that the Trinity is one God? For thence, of that Holy Spirit, does love come to us, as the apostle says: “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.”709 If then the love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us, makes many souls one soul, and many hearts one heart, how much rather are the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, one God, one light, and one beginning?

6. Let us hear, then, the Beginning who speaks to us: “I have,” said He, “many things to say of you and to judge.” You remember that He said, “I do not judge any one.”710 See, now He says, “I have many things to say of you and to judge.” But, “I do not judge” is one thing: 708 Acts ii. and iv. 32, etc. 709 Rom. v. 5. 710 Ver. 15. “I have to judge” is another; for He had come to save the world, not to judge the world.711 In saying, “I have many things to say of you and to judge,” He speaks of the future judgment. For therefore did He ascend, that He may come to judge the living and the dead. No one will judge more justly than He who was unjustly judged. “Many things,” said He, “have I to say of you and to judge; but He that sent me is true.” See how the Son, His equal, gives glory to the Father. For He sets us an example, and says as it were in our hearts: O believer, if thou hearest my gospel, the Lord thy God saith to thee, when I, in the beginning God the Word with God, equal with the Father, coeternal with Him that begat, give glory to Him whose Son I am, how canst thou be proud before Him, whose servant thou art?

7. “I have many things,” He said, “to say of you and to judge: but He that sent me is true;” as if He had said, Therefore I judge the truth, because, as the Son of the True One, I am the truth. The Father true, the Son the truth,—which do we account the greater? Let us reflect, if we can, which is the greater, the True One or the Truth.712 Take some other instances. Is a pious man, or piety, the more comprehensive? Surely piety itself; for the pious is derived from piety, not piety from the pious. For piety may still exist, though he who was pious became impious. He has lost his piety, but has taken nothing from piety itself. What also of comely and comeliness? Comeliness is more than comely; for comeliness gives existence to the comely, not the comely to comeliness. And so of chaste and chastity. Chastity is clearly something more than chaste. For if chastity had no existence, one would have no ground to be chaste; but though one may refuse to be chaste, chastity remains entire. If then the term piety implies more than the term pious, comeliness more than comely, chastity than chaste, shall we say that the Truth is more than the True One? If we say so, we shall begin to say that the Son is greater than the Father. For the Lord Himself says most distinctly, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”713 Therefore, if the Son is the truth, what is the Father but what the Truth Himself says, “He that sent me is true”? The Son is the truth, the Father true. I inquire which is the greater, but find equality. For the true Father is true not because He contained a part of that truth, but because He begat it entire.

8. I see I must speak more plainly. And, not to detain you long, let me treat only of this point to-day. When I have finished what, with God’s help, I wish to say, my discourse shall close. I have said this, then, to enlist your attention. Every soul, as being a thing, is mutable; and although a great creature, yet a creature; though superior to the body, yet made. Every soul, then, since it is changeable—that is, sometimes believes, sometimes disbelieves; at one time wishes, at another time refuses; at one time is adulterous, at another chaste; now good, and again wicked,—is changeable. But God is that which is, and so has retained as His own 711 Chap. xii. 47. 712 Verax an veritas. 713 John xiv. 6. peculiar name, “I am who am.”714 Such also is the Son, when He says, “If ye believe not that I am;” and thereto pertains also, “Who art thou? The Beginning” (ver. 25). God therefore is unchangeable, the soul changeable. When the soul receives from God the elements of its goodness it becomes good by participation, just as by participation thine eye seeth. For it sees not when the light is withdrawn, while so long as it shares in the light it sees. Since then by participation the soul is made good, if it changes and becomes bad, the goodness remains that made it good. For there is a goodness of which it partook when good; and when it has turned to evil, that goodness continues entire. If the soul fall away and become evil, there is no lessening of goodness; if it return and become good, that goodness is not enlarged. Thine eye participates in this light, and thou seest. Is it shut? Then thou hast not diminished the light. Is it open? Thou hast not increased the light. By this illustration, brethren, understand that if the soul is pious, there is piety with God, of which the soul is partaker; if the soul is chaste, there is chastity with God, of which it partakes; if it is good, there is goodness with God, of which it partakes; if it is true, there is truth with God, of which the soul is partaker. Whereof if the soul is no partaker, every man is false;715 and if every man may be false, no man is true of himself.716 But the true Father is true of Himself,717 for He begat the Truth. It is one thing to say, That man is true, for he has taken in the truth: it is another, God is true, for He begat the Truth. See then how God is true,—not by participating in, but by generating the Truth. I see you have understood me, and am glad. Let this suffice you to-day. The rest, according as He gives it, we shall expound when the Lord pleases.

1. Of the holy Gospel according to John, which you see in our hand, your Charity has already heard much, whereon by God’s grace we have discoursed according to our ability, pressing on your notice that this evangelist, specially, has chosen to speak of the Lord’s divinity, wherein He is equal with the Father and the only Son of God; and on that account he has been compared to the eagle, because no other bird is understood to take a loftier flight. Accordingly, to what follows in order, as the Lord enables us to treat of it, listen with all your attention.

2. We have spoken to you on the preceding passage, suggesting how the Father may be understood as True, and the Son as the Truth. But when the Lord Jesus said, “He that sent me is true,” the Jews understood not that He spake to them of the Father. And He said to them, as you have just heard in the reading, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am, and [that] I do nothing of myself; but as the Father hath taught me, I speak these things.” What means this? For it looks as if all He said was, that they would know who He was after His passion. Without doubt, therefore, He saw that some there, whom He Himself knew, whom with the rest of His saints He Himself in His foreknowledge had chosen before the foundation of the world, would believe after His passion. These are the very persons whom we are constantly commending, and with much entreaty setting forth for your imitation. For on the sending down of the Holy Spirit after the Lord’s passion, and resurrection, and ascension, when miracles were being done in the name of Him whom, as if dead, the persecuting Jews had despised, they were pricked in their hearts; and they who in their rage slew Him were changed and believed; and they who in their rage shed His blood, now in the spirit of faith drank it; to wit, those three thousand, and those five thousand Jews718 whom now He saw there, when He said, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He.” It was as if He had said, I let your recognition lie over till I have completed my passion: in your own order ye shall know who I am. Not that all who heard Him were only then to believe, that is, after the Lord’s passion; for a little after it is said, “As He spake these words, many believed on Him;” and the Son of man was not yet lifted up. But the lifting up He is speaking of is that of His passion, not of His glorification; of the cross, not of heaven; for He was exalted there also when He hung on the tree. But that exaltation was His humiliation; for then He became obedient even to the death of the cross.719 This required to be accomplished by the hands of those who should afterwards believe, and to whom He says, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am 718 Acts ii. 37, 41; iv. 4. 719 Phil. ii. 8. He.” And why so, but that no one might despair, however guilty his conscience, when he saw those forgiven their homicide who had slain the Christ?

3. The Lord then, recognizing such in that crowd, said, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am [He].” You know already what “I am” signifies; and we must not be continually repeating, lest so great a subject beget distaste. Recall that, “I am who am,” and “He who is hath sent me,”720 and you will recognize the meaning of the words, “Then shall ye know that I am.” But both the Father is, and the Holy Spirit is. To the same is belongs the whole Trinity. But because the Lord spake as the Son, in order that, when He says, “Then shall ye know that I am,” there might be no chance of entrance for the error of the Sabellians, that is, of the Patripassians,—an error which I have charged you not to hold, but to beware of,—the error, I mean, of those who have said, The Father and Son are one and the same; two names, but one reality;—to guard them against that error, when the Lord said, “Then shall ye know that I am,” that He might not be understood as Himself the Father, He immediately added, “And I do nothing of myself; but as my Father taught me, I speak these things.” Already was the Sabellian beginning to rejoice over the discovery of a ground for his error; but immediately on showing himself as it were in the shade, he was confounded by the light of the following sentence. Thou thoughtest that He was the Father, because He said, “I am.” Hear now that He is the Son: “And I do nothing of myself.” What means this, “I do nothing of myself”? Of myself I am not. For the Son is God, of721 the Father; but the Father is God, yet not of the Son. The Son is God of God, and the Father is God, but not of God. The Son is light of light; and the Father is light, but not of light. The Son is, but there is [One] of whom He is; and the Father is, but there is none of whom He is.

4. Let not then, my brethren, His further words, “As my Father hath taught me, I speak these things,” be the occasion of any carnal thought stealing into your minds. For human weakness cannot think, but as it is accustomed to act and to hear. Do not then set before your eyes as it were two men, one the father, the other the son, and the father speaking to the son; as any one of you may do, when you say something to your son, admonishing and instructing him how to speak, to charge his memory with what you have told him, and, having done so, to express it in words, to enunciate distinctly, and convey to the ears of others what he has apprehended with his own. Think not thus, lest you be fabricating idols in your heart. The human shape, the outlines of human limbs, the form of human flesh, the outward senses, stature and motions of the body, the functions of the tongue, the distinctions of sounds,—think not of such as existing in that Trinity, save as they pertain to the servantform, which the only-begotten Son assumed, when the Word was made flesh to dwell among 720 Ex. iii. 14. 721 De: so in what follows. us.722 Thereof I forbid thee not, human weakness, to think according to thy knowledge: nay, rather I require thee. If the faith that is in thee be true, think of Christ as such; but as such of the Virgin Mary, not of God the Father. He was an infant, He grew as a man, He walked as a man, He hungered, He thirsted as a man, He slept as a man; at last He suffered as a man, hung on the tree, was slain and buried as a man. In the same form He rose again; in the same, before the eyes of His disciples, He ascended into heaven; in the same will He yet come to judgment. For angel lips have declared in the Gospel, “He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.”723 When then you think of the servant-form in Christ, think of a human likeness, if you have faith; but when you think, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,”724 away with all human fashioning from your heart. Banish from your thoughts everything bounded by corporeal limits, included in local measurement, or spread out in a mass, how great soever its size. Perish utterly such a figment from your heart. Think, if you can, on the beauty of wisdom, picture to yourself the beauty of righteousness. Has that a shape? a size? a color? It has none of these, and yet it is; for if it were not, it would neither be loved nor worthy of praise, nor be cherished in our heart and life as an object of honor and affection. But men here become wise; and whence would they so, had wisdom no existence? And further, O man, if thou canst not see thine own wisdom with the eyes of the flesh, nor think of it by the same mental imagery as thou canst of bodily things, wilt thou dare to thrust the shape of a human body on the wisdom of God?

5. What shall we say then, brethren? How spake the Father to the Son, seeing that the Son says, “As the Father taught me, I speak these things”? Did He speak to Him? When the Father taught the Son, did He use words, as you do when you teach your son? How could He use words to the Word! What words, many in number, could be used to the one Word? Did the Word of the Father approach His ears to the Father’s mouth? Such things are carnal: banish them from your hearts. For this I say, if only you have understood my words, I certainly have spoken and my words have sounded, and by their sound have reached your ears, and through your sense of hearing have carried their meaning to your mind, if so be you have understood. Suppose that some person of Latin725 speech has heard, but has only heard without understanding, what I have said. As regards the noise issuing from my mouth, he who has understood not has been a sharer therein just like yourselves. He has heard that sound; the same syllables have smote on his ears, but they have produced no effect on his 722 Chap. i. 14. 723 Acts i. 11. 724 Chap. i. 1. 725 “Latin” here, as used by Augustin, would require to be translated “English,” to give the exact force of the illustration in an English version.—Tr. mind. Why? Because he understood not. But if you have understood, whence comes your understanding? My words have sounded in the ear: have I kindled any light in the heart? Without doubt, if what I have said is true, and this truth you have not only heard, but also understood, two things have there been wrought (distinguish between them), hearing and intelligence. Hearing has been wrought by me, but by whom has understanding? I have spoken to the ear, that you might hear; who has spoken to your heart for understanding? Doubtless some one has also said something to your heart, that not only the noise of words might strike your ear, but something also of the truth might descend into your heart. Some one has spoken also to your heart, but you do not see him. If, brethren, you have understood, your heart also has been spoken to. Intelligence is the gift of God. And who, if you have understood, has spoken so in your heart, but He to whom the Psalm says, “Give me understanding, that I may learn Thy commandments?”726 For example, the bishop has spoken. What has he said, some one asks. You repeat what he has spoken, and add, He has said the truth. Then another, who has not understood, says, What has he said, or what is it you are praising? Both have heard me; I have spoken to both; but to one of them God has spoken. If we may compare small things with great (for what are we to Him?), something, I know not what, of an incorporeal and spiritual kind God works in us, which is neither sound to strike the ear, nor color to be discerned by the eyes, nor smell to enter the nostrils, nor taste to be judged of by the mouth, nor anything hard or soft to be sensible to the touch; yet something there is which it is easy to feel,—impossible to explain. If then God, as I was saying, speaks in our hearts without sound, how speaks He to His Son? Thus then, brethren, think thus as much as you can, if, as I have said, we may in some measure compare small things with great: think thus. In an incorporeal way the Father spoke to the Son, because in an incorporeal way the Father begot the Son. Nor did He so teach Him as if He had begotten Him untaught; but to have taught Him is the same as to have begotten Him full of knowledge; and this, “The Father hath taught me,” is the same as, The Father hath begotten me already knowing. For if, as few understand, the nature of the Truth is simple, to be is to the Son the same as to know. From Him therefore He has knowledge, from whom He has being.727 Not that from Him He had first being, and afterwards knowledge; but as in begetting He gave Him to be, so in begetting He gave Him to know; for, as was said, to the simple nature of the Truth, being is not one thing and knowing another, but one and the same.

6. Thus then He spoke to the Jews, and added, “And He that sent me is with me.” He had already said this also before, but of this important point He is constantly reminding them,—“He sent me,” and “He is with me.” If then, O Lord, He is with Thee, not so much hath the One been sent by the other, but ye Both have come. And yet, while Both are together, 726 Ps. cxix. 73. 727 Ut noverit—ut sit. One was sent, the Other was the sender; for incarnation is a sending, and the incarnation itself belongs only to the Son and not to the Father. The Father therefore sent the Son, but did not withdraw from the Son. For it was not that the Father was absent from the place to which He sent the Son. For where is not the Maker of all things? Where is He not, who said, “I fill heaven and earth”?728 But perhaps the Father is everywhere, and the Son not so? Listen to the evangelist: “He was in this world, and the world was made by Him.”729 Therefore said He, “He that sent me,” by whose power as Father I am incarnate, “is with me,—hath not left me.” Why hath He not left me? “He hath not left me,” He says, “alone; for I do always those things that please Him.” That equality exists always; not from a certain beginning, and then onwards; but without beginning, without end. For Divine generation has no beginning in time, since time itself was created by the Only-begotten. 7. “As He spake these words, many believed on Him.” Would that, while I speak also, many, who before this were otherwise disposed, understood and believed on Him! For perhaps there are some Arians in this large assembly. I dare not suspect that there are any Sabellians, who say that the Father Himself is one with the Son, seeing that heresy is too old, and has been gradually eviscerated. But that of the Arians seems still to have some movement about it, like that of a putrefying carcase, or certainly, at the most, like a man at the last gasp; and from this some still require deliverance, just as from that other many were delivered. This province, indeed, did not use to have such; but ever since the arrival of many foreigners, some of these have also found their way to our neighborhood. See then, while the Lord spoke these words, many Jews believed on Him. May I see also that, while I am speaking, Arians are believing, not on me, but with me!

8. “Then said the Lord to those Jews who believed on Him, If ye continue in my word.” “Continue,” I say, for you are now initiated and have begun to be there. “If ye continue,” that is, in the faith which is now begun in you who believe, to what will you attain? See the nature of the beginning, and whither it leads. You have loved the foundation, give heed to the summit, and out of this low condition seek that other elevation. For faith has humility, but knowledge and immortality and eternity possess not lowliness, but loftiness; that is, upraising, all-sufficiency, eternal stability, full freedom from hostile assault, from fear of failure. That which has its beginning in faith is great, but is despised. In a building also the foundation is usually of little account with the unskilled. A large trench is made, and stones are thrown in every way and everywhere. No embellishment, no beauty are apparent there; just as also in the root of a tree there is no appearance of beauty. And yet all that delights you in the tree has sprung from the root. You look at the root and feel no delight: you look at the tree and admire it. Foolish man! what you admire has grown out of that which gave 728 Jer. xxiii. 24. 729 Chap. i. 10. you no delight. The faith of believers seems a thing of little value,—you have no scales to weigh it. Hear then to what it attains, and see its greatness: as the Lord Himself says in another place, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed.”730 What is there of less account than that, yet what is there pervaded with greater energy? What more minute, yet what more fervidly expansive? And so “ye” also, He says, “if ye continue in my word,” wherein ye have believed, to what will ye be brought? “ye shall be my disciples indeed.” And what does that benefit us? “and ye shall know the truth.”

9. What, brethren, does He promise believers? “And ye shall know the truth.” Why so? Had they not come to such knowledge when the Lord was speaking? If they had not, how did they believe? They believed, not because they knew, but that they might come to know. For we believe in order that we may know, we do not know in order that we may believe. For what we shall yet know, neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered the heart of man. 731 For what is faith, but believing what you see not? Faith then is to believe what you see not; truth, to see what you have believed, as He Himself saith in a certain place. The Lord then walked on earth, first of all, for the creation of faith. He was man, He was made in a low condition. He was seen by all, but not by all was He known. By many was He rejected, by the multitude was He slain, by few was He mourned; and yet even by those who mourned Him, His true being was still unrecognized. All this is the beginning as it were of faith’s lineaments and future up-building. As the Lord, referring thereto, saith in a certain place, “He that loveth me keepeth my commandments; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”732 They certainly already saw the person to whom they were listening; and yet to them, if they loved Him, does He give it as a promise that they should see Him. So also here, “Ye shall know the truth.” How so? Is that not the truth which Thou hast been speaking? The truth it is, but as yet it is only believed, not beheld. If you abide in that which is believed, you shall attain to that which is seen. Hence John himself, the holy evangelist, says in his epistle, “Dearly beloved, we are the sons of God; but it is not yet apparent what we shall be.” We are so already, and something we shall be. What more shall we be than we are? Listen: “It is not yet apparent what we shall be: [but] we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him.” How? “For we shall see Him as He is.”733 A great promise, but the reward of faith. You seek the reward; then let the work precede. If you believe, ask for the reward of faith; but if you believe not, with what face can you seek the reward of faith? “If” then “ye continue in my word, ye shall be my disciples indeed,” that ye may behold the very truth as it is, not through sounding words, 730 Matt. xvii. 20. 731 Isa. lxiv. 4; 1 Cor. ii. 9. 732 Chap. xiv. 21. 733 1 John iii. 2. but in dazzling light, wherewith He shall satisfy734 us: as we read in the psalm, “The light of Thy countenance is impressed upon us.”735 We are God’s money: we have wandered away as coin from the treasury. The impression that was stamped upon us has been rubbed out by our wandering. He has come to refashion, for He it was that fashioned us at first; and He is Himself asking for His money, as Cæsar for his. Therefore He says, “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s:”736 to Cæsar his money, to God yourselves. And then shall the truth be reproduced in us.

10. What shall I say to your Charity? Oh that our hearts were in some measure aspiring after that ineffable glory! Oh that we were passing our pilgrimage in sighs, and loving not the world, and continually pushing onwards with pious minds to Him who hath called us! Longing is the very bosom of the heart. We shall attain, if with all our power we give way to our longing. Such in our behalf is the object of the divine Scriptures, of the assembling of the people, of the celebration of the sacra ments, of holy baptism, of singing God’s praise, and of this our own exposition,—that this longing may not only be implanted and germinate, but also expand to such a measure of capacity as to be fit to take in what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man. But love with me. He who loves God is not much in love with money. And I have but touched on this infirmity, not venturing to say, He loves not money at all, but, He loves not money much; as if money were to be loved, but not in a great degree. Oh, were we loving God worthily, we should have no love at all for money! Money then will be thy means of pilgrimage, not the stimulant of lust; something to use for necessity, not to joy over as a means of delight. Love God, if He has wrought in thee somewhat of that which thou hearest and praisest. Use the world: let not the world hold thee captive. Thou art passing on the journey thou hast begun; thou hast come, again to depart, not to abide. Thou art passing on thy journey, and this life is but a wayside inn. Use money as the traveller at an inn uses table, cup, pitcher, and couch, with the purpose not of remaining, but of leaving them behind. If such you would be, you, who can stir up your hearts and hear me; if such you would be, you will attain to His promises. It is not too much for your strength, for mighty is the hand of Him who hath called you. He hath called you. Call upon Him, say to Him, Thou hast called us, we call upon Thee; see, we have heard Thee calling us, hear us calling upon Thee: lead us whither Thou hast promised; perfect what Thou hast begun; forsake not Thine own gifts; leave not Thine own field; let Thy tender shoots yet be gathered into Thy barn. Temptations abound in the world, 734 Or “impress;” satiaverit, or signaverit. 735 Ps. iv. 6: Aug., with Vulg,. translates וּניר”עָיהסָנְ passively and indic., instead of active and imperat., as Engl. Vers.—Tr. 736 Matt. xxii. 21. but greater is He who made the world. Temptations abound, but he fails not whose hope reposes in Him in whom there is no deficiency.

11. I have been exhorting you, brethren, to this in such words, because the freedom of which our Lord Jesus Christ speaks belongs not to this present time. Look at what He added: “Ye shall be my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” What means that—“shall set you free”? It shall make you freemen. In a word, the carnal, and fleshly-minded Jews—not those who had believed, but those in the crowd who believed not—thought that an injury was done them, because He said to them, “The truth shall make you free.” They were indignant at being designated as slaves. And slaves truly they were; and He explains to them what slavery it is, and what is that future freedom which is promised by Himself. But of this liberty and of that slavery it were too long to speak today.

1. Of what follows of the previous lesson, and has been read publicly to us to-day from the holy Gospel, I then deferred speaking, because I had already said much, and of that liberty into which the grace of the Saviour calleth us it was needful to treat in no cursory or negligent way. Of this, by the Lord’s help, we purpose speaking to you to-day. For those to whom the Lord Jesus Christ was speaking were Jews, in a large measure indeed His enemies, but also in some measure already become, and yet to be, His friends; for some He saw there, as we have already said, who should yet believe after His passion. Looking to these, He had said, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He.”737 There also were those who, when He so spake, straightway believed. To them He spake what we have heard to-day: “Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed on Him, If ye continue in my word, ye shall be my disciples indeed.” By continuing ye shall be so; for as now ye are believers, by so continuing ye shall be beholders. Hence there follows, “And ye shall know the truth.” The truth is unchangeable. The truth is bread, which refreshes our minds and fails not; changes the eater, and is not itself changed into the eater. The truth itself is the Word of God, God with God, the only-begotten Son. This Truth was for our sake clothed with flesh, that He might be born of the Virgin Mary, and the prophecy fulfilled, “Truth has sprung from the earth.”738 This Truth then, when speaking to the Jews, lay hid in the flesh. But He lay hid not in order to be denied, but to be deferred [in His manifestation]; to be deferred, in order to suffer in the flesh; and to suffer in the flesh, in order that flesh might be redeemed from sin. And so our Lord Jesus Christ, standing full in sight as regards the infirmity of flesh, but hid as regards the majesty of Godhead, said to those who had believed on Him, when He so spake, “If ye continue in my word, ye shall be my disciples indeed.” For he that endureth to the end shall be saved.739 “And ye shall know the truth,” which now is hid from you, and speaks to you. “And the truth shall free you.” This word, liberabit [shall free], the Lord hath taken from libertas [freedom]. For liberat [frees, delivers] is properly nothing else but liberum facit [makes free]. As salvat [he saves] is nothing else but salvum facit [he makes safe]; as he heals is nothing else but he makes whole; he enriches is nothing else but he makes rich; so liberat he frees is nothing else but liberum facit [he makes free]. This is clearer in the Greek word.740 For in Latin usage we commonly say that a man is delivered (liberari), in regard not to liberty, but only to safety, just as one is said to be delivered 737 Chap. viii. 28. 738 Ps. lxxxv. 11. 739 Matt. x. 22. 740 έλευθερώσει. from some infirmity. So is it said customarily, but not properly. But the Lord made such use of this word in saying, “And the truth shall make you free (liberabit),” that in the Greek tongue no one could doubt that He spake of freedom.

2. In short, the Jews also so understood and “answered Him;” not those who had already believed, but those in that crowd who were not yet believers. “They answered Him, We are Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be free?” But the Lord had not said, “Ye shall be free,” but, “The truth shall make you free.” That word, however, they, because, as I have said, it is clearly so in the Greek, understood as pointing only to freedom, and puffed themselves up as Abraham’s seed, and said, “We are Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be free?” O inflated skin! such is not magnanimity, but windy swelling. For even as regards freedom in this life, how was that the truth when you said, “We were never in bondage to any man”? Was not Joseph sold?741 Were not the holy prophets led into captivity?742 And again, did not that very nation, when making bricks in Egypt, also serve hard rulers, not only in gold and silver, but also in clay?743 If you were never in bondage to any man, ungrateful people, why is it that God is continually reminding you that He delivered you from the house of bondage?744 Or mean you, perchance, that your fathers were in bondage, but you who speak were never in bondage to any man? How then were you now paying tribute to the Romans, out of which also you formed a trap for the Truth Himself, as if to ensnare Him, when you said, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar?” in order that, had He said, It is lawful, you might fasten on Him as one ill-disposed to the liberty of Abraham’s seed; and if He said, It is not lawful, you might slander Him before the kings of the earth, as forbidding the payment of tribute to such? Deservedly were you defeated on producing the money, and compelled yourselves to concur in your own capture. For there it was told you, “Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” after your own reply, that the money-piece bore the image of Cæsar.745 For as Cæsar looks for his own image on the coin, so God looks for His in man. Thus, then, did He answer the Jews. I am moved, brethren, by the hollow pride of men, because even of that very freedom of theirs, which they understood carnally, they lied when they said, “We were never in bondage to any man.”

3. But to the Lord’s own answer, let us give better and more earnest heed, lest we ourselves be also found bondmen. For “Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that every one who committeth sin is the servant of sin.” He is the servant—would that it 741 Gen. xxxvii. 28. 742 2 Kings xxiv. (Ezek. i. 1, etc.—Tr). 743 Ex. i. 14. 744 Ex. xiii. 3; Deut. v. 6, etc. 745 Matt. xxii. 15–21. were of man, and not of sin! Who will not tremble at such words? The Lord our God grant us, that is, both you and me, that I may speak in fitting terms of this freedom to be sought, and of that bondage to be avoided. “Amen, amen verily, verily, I say unto you.” The Truth speaks: and in what sense does the Lord our God claim it as His to say, “Amen, amen, I say unto you”? His charge is weighty in so announcing it. In some sort, if lawful to be said, His form of swearing is, “Amen, amen, I say unto you.” Amen in a way may be interpreted, It is true truly, verily; and yet it is not interpreted, though it might have been said, What is true verily I say unto you. Neither the Greek translator nor the Latin has dared to do so; for this word Amen is neither Greek nor Latin, but Hebrew. So it has remained without interpretation, to possess honor as the covering of something hidden; not in order to be disowned, but that it might not, as a thing laid bare to the eye, fall into disrepute. And yet it is not once, but twice uttered by the Lord, “Amen, amen, I say unto you.” And now learn from the very doubling, how much was implied in the charge before us.

4. What, then, is the charge given? Verily, verily, I say unto you, saith the Truth who surely, though He had not said, Verily, I say, could not possibly lie. Yet thereby He impresses, inculcates His charge, arouses in a way the sleeping, makes them attentive, and would not be contemned. What does He say? “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that every one who committeth sin is the servant of sin.” Miserable slavery! Men frequently, when they suffer under wicked masters, demand to get themselves sold, not seeking to be without a master, but at all events to change him. What can the servant of sin do? To whom can he make his demand? To whom apply for redress? Of whom require himself to be sold? And then at times a man’s slave, worn out by the commands of an unfeeling master, finds rest in flight. Whither can the servant of sin flee? Himself he carries with him wherever he flees. An evil conscience flees not from itself; it has no place to go to; it follows itself. Yea, he cannot withdraw from himself, for the sin he commits is within. He has committed sin to obtain some bodily pleasure. The pleasure passes away; the sin remains. What delighted is gone; the sting has remained behind. Evil bondage! Sometimes men flee to the Church, and we generally permit them, uninstructed as they are—men, wishing to be rid of their master, who are unwilling to be rid of their sins. But sometimes also those subjected to an unlawful and wicked yoke flee for refuge to the Church; for, though free-born men, they are retained in bondage: and an appeal is made to the bishop. And unless he care to put forth every effort to save free-birth from oppression, he is accounted unmerciful. Let us all flee to Christ, and appeal against sin to God as our deliverer. Let us seek to get ourselves sold, that we may be redeemed by His blood. For the Lord says, “Ye were sold for nought, and ye shall be redeemed without money.” 746 Without price, that is, of your own; because of mine. So saith the Lord; 746 Isa. lii. 3. for He Himself has paid the price, not in money, but His own blood. Otherwise we had remained both bondmen and indigent.

5. From this bondage, then, we are set free by the Lord alone. He who had it not, Himself delivers us from it; for He alone came without sin in the flesh. For the little ones whom you see carried in their mothers’ hands cannot yet walk, and are already in fetters; for they have received from Adam what they are loosened from by Christ. To them also, when baptized, pertains that grace which is promised by the Lord; for He only can deliver from sin who came without sin, and was made a sacrifice for sin. For you heard when the apostle was read: “We are ambassadors,” he says, “for Christ, as though God were exhorting you by us; we beseech you in Christ’s stead,”—that is, as if Christ were beseeching you, and for what?—“to be reconciled unto God.” If the apostle exhorts and beseeches us to be reconciled unto God, then were we enemies to God. For no one is reconciled unless from a state of enmity. And we have become enemies not by nature, but by sin. From the same source are we the servants of sin, that we are the enemies of God. God has no enemies in a state of freedom. They must be slaves; and slaves will they remain unless delivered by Him to whom they wished by their sins to be enemies. Therefore, says be, “We beseech you in Christ’s stead to be reconciled unto God.” But how are we reconciled, save by the removal of that which separates between us and Himself? For He says by the prophet, “He hath not made the ear heavy that it should not hear; but your iniquities have separated between you and your God.”747 And so, then, we are not reconciled, unless that which is in the midst is taken away, and something else is put in its place. For there is a separating medium, and, on the other hand, there is a reconciling Mediator. The separating medium is sin, the reconciling Mediator is the Lord Jesus Christ: “For there is one God and Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”748 To take then away the separating wall, which is sin, that Mediator has come, and the priest has Himself become the sacrifice. And because He was made a sacrifice for sin, offering Himself as a whole burnt-offering on the cross of His passion, the apostle, after saying, “We beseech you in Christ’s stead to be reconciled unto God,”—as if we had said, How shall we be able to be reconciled?—goes on to say, “He hath made Him,” that is, Christ Himself, “who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we may be the righteousness of God in Him,”749 “Him,” he says, Christ Himself our God, “who knew no sin.” For He came in the flesh, that is, in the likeness of sinful flesh,750 but not in sinful flesh, because He had no sin at all; and therefore became a true sacrifice for sin, because He Himself had no sin.

1. Our Lord, in the form of a servant, yet not a servant, but even in servant-form the Lord (for that form of flesh was indeed servant-like; but though He was “in the likeness of sinful flesh,”775 yet was He not sinful flesh) promised freedom to those who believed in Him. But the Jews, as if proudly glorying in their own freedom, refused with indignation to be made free, when they were the servants of sin. And therefore they said that they were free, because Abraham’s seed. What answer, then, the Lord gave them to this, we have heard in the reading of this day’s lesson. “I know,” He said, “that ye are Abraham’s children; but ye seek to kill me, because my word taketh no hold in you.” I recognize you, He says; “Ye are the children of Abraham, but ye seek to kill me.” I recognize the fleshly origin, not the believing heart. “Ye are the children of Abraham,” but after the flesh. Therefore He says, “Ye seek to kill me, because my word taketh no hold in you.” If my word were taken, it would take hold: if ye were taken, ye would be enclosed like fishes within the meshes of faith. What then means that—“taketh no hold in you”? It taketh not hold of your heart, because not received by your heart. For so is the word of God, and so it ought to be to believers, as a hook to the fish: it takes when it is taken. No injury is done to those who are taken; since they are taken for salvation, and not for destruction. Hence the Lord says to His disciples: “Come after me, and I shall make you fishers of men.”776 But such were not these; and yet they were the children of Abraham,—children of a man of God, unrighteous themselves. For they inherited the fleshly genus, but were become degenerate, by not imitating the faith of him whose children they were.

2. You have heard, indeed, the Lord saying, “I know that ye are Abraham’s children.” Hear what He says afterwards: “I speak that which I have seen with my Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.” He had already said, “I know that ye are Abraham’s children.” What is it, then, that they do? What He told them: “Ye seek to kill me.” This they never saw with Abraham. But the Lord wishes God the Father to be understood when He says, “I speak that which I have seen with my Father.” I have seen the truth: I speak the truth, because I am the Truth. For if the Lord speaks the truth which He has seen with the Father, He has seen Himself—He speaks Himself; because He Himself is the Truth of the Father, which He saw with the Father. For He is the Word—the Word which was with God. The evil, then, which these men do, and which the Lord chides and reprehends, where have they seen it? With their father. When we come to hear in what follows the still clearer statement who is their father, then shall we understand what kind of things they saw with such a 775 Rom. viii. 3. 776 Matt. iv. 19. father; for as yet He names not their father. A little above He referred to Abraham, but in regard to their fleshly origin, not their similarity of life. He is about to speak of that other father of theirs, who neither begat them nor created them to be men. But still they were his children in as far as they were evil, not in as far as they were men; in what they imitated him, and not as created by him.

3. “They answered and said unto Him, Abraham is our father;” as if, What hast thou to say against Abraham? or, If thou canst, dare to find fault with Abraham. Not that the Lord dared not find fault with Abraham; but Abraham was not one to be found fault with by the Lord, but rather approved. But these men seemed to challenge Him to say some evil of Abraham, and so to have some occasion for doing what they purposed. “Abraham is our father.”

4. Let us hear how the Lord answered them, praising Abraham to their condemnation. “Jesus saith unto them, If ye are Abraham’s children, do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.” See, he was praised, they were condemned. Abraham was no manslayer. I say not, He implies, I am Abraham’s Lord; though did I say it, I would say the truth. For He said in another place, “Before Abraham was, I am” (ver. 58); and then they sought to stone Him. He said not so. But meanwhile, as you see me, as you look upon me, as alone you think of me, I am a man. Wherefore, then, wish you to kill a man who is telling you what he has heard of God, but because you are not the children of Abraham? And yet He said above, “I know that ye are Abraham’s children.” He does not deny their origin, but condemns their deeds. Their flesh was from him, but not their life.

5. But we, dearly beloved, do we come of Abraham’s race, or was Abraham in any sense our father according to the flesh? The flesh of the Jews draws its origin from his flesh, not so the flesh of Christians. We have come of other nations, and yet, by imitating him, we have become the children of Abraham. Listen to the apostle: “To Abraham and to his seed were the promises made. He saith not,” he adds, “And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”777 We then have become Abraham’s seed by the grace of God. It was not of Abraham’s flesh that God made any co-heirs with him. He disinherited the former, He adopted the latter; and from that olive tree whose root is in the patriarchs, He cut off the proud natural branches, and engrafted the lowly wild olive.778 And so, when the Jews came to John to be baptized, he broke out upon them, and addressed them, “O generation of vipers.” Very greatly indeed did they boast of the loftiness of their origin, but he called them a generation of vipers,—not even of human beings, but of vipers. He saw the form of men, but detected the poison. Yet they had come to be changed,779 because at all 777 Gal. iii. 16, 29. 778 Rom. xi. 17. 779 In some editions, “to be cleansed.” events to be baptized; and he said to them, “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance. And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”780 If ye bring not forth fruits meet for repentance, flatter not yourselves about such a lineage. God is able to condemn you, without defrauding Abraham of children. For He has a way to raise up children to Abraham. Those who imitate his faith shall be made his children. “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” Such are we. In our parents we were stones, when we worshipped stones for our god. Of such stones God has created a family to Abraham.

6. Why, then, does this empty and vain bragging exalt itself? Let them cease boasting that they are the children of Abraham. They have heard what they ought to have heard: “If ye are the children of Abraham,” prove it by your deeds, not by words. “Ye seek to kill me, a man;”—I say not, meanwhile, the Son of God; I say not God; I say not the Word, for the Word dies not. I say merely this that you see; for only what you see can you kill, and whom you see not can you offend. “This,” then, “did not Abraham.” “Ye do the works of your father.” And as yet He says not who is that father of theirs.

7. And now what answer did they give Him? For they began somewhat to realize that the Lord was not speaking of carnal generation, but of their manner of life. And because it is the custom of the Scriptures, which they read, to call it, in a spiritual sense, fornication, when the soul is, as it were, prostituted by subjection to many false gods, they made this reply: “Then said they to Him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” Abraham has now lost his importance. For they were repulsed as they ought to have been by the truth-speaking mouth; because such was Abraham, whose deeds they failed to imitate, and yet gloried in his lineage. And they altered their reply, saying, I believe, with themselves, As often as we name Abraham, he goes on to say to us, Why do ye not imitate him in whose lineage ye glory? Such a man, so holy, just, and guileless, we cannot imitate. Let us call God our Father, and see what he will say to us.

8. Has falsehood indeed found something to say, and should not truth find its fitting reply? Let us hear what they say: let us hear what they hear. “We have one Father,” they say, “even God. Then said Jesus unto them, If God were your Father, ye would doubtless love me; for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but He sent me.” Ye call God Father; recognize me, then, as at least a brother. At the same time He gave a stimulus to the hearts of the intelligent, by touching on that which He has a habit of saying, “I came not of myself: He sent me. I proceeded forth and came from God.” Remember what we are wont to say: From Him He came; and from whom He came, with Him He came. The sending of Christ, therefore, is His incarnation. But as respects the proceeding forth of the 780 Matt. iii. 7–9. Word from God, it is an eternal procession. Time holds not Him by whom time was created. Let no one be saying in his heart, Before the Word was, how did God exist? Never say, Before the Word of God was. God was never without the Word, because the Word is abiding, not transient; God, not a sound; by whom the heaven and earth were made, and which passed not away with those things that were made upon the earth. From Him, then, He proceeded forth as God, the equal, the only Son, the Word of the Father; and came to us, for the Word was made flesh that He might dwell among us. His coming indicates His humanity; His abiding, His divinity. It is His Godhead towards which, His humanity whereby, we make progress. Had He not become that whereby we might advance, we should never attain to Him who abideth ever.

9. “Why,” He says, “do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word.” And so they could not understand, because they could not hear. And whence could they not hear, but just because they refused to be set right by believing? And why so? “Ye are of your father the devil.” How long do ye keep speaking of a father? How often will ye change your fathers,—at one time Abraham, at another God? Hear from the Son of God whose children ye be: “Ye are of your father the devil.”

10. Here, now, we must beware of the heresy of the Manicheans, which affirms that there is a certain principle of evil, and a certain family of darkness with its princes, which had the presumption to fight against God; but that God, not to let His kingdom be subdued by the hostile family, despatched against them, as it were, His own offspring, princes of His own [kingdom of] light; and so subdued that race from which the devil derives his origin. From thence, also, they say our flesh derives its origin, and accordingly think the Lord said, “Ye are of your father the devil,” because they were evil, as it were, by nature, deriving their origin from the opposing family of darkness. So they err, so their eyes are blinded, so they make themselves the family of darkness, by believing a falsehood against Him who created them. For every nature is good; but man’s nature has been corrupted by an evil will. What God made cannot be evil, if man were not [a cause of] evil to himself. But surely the Creator is Creator, and the creature a creature [a thing created]. The creature cannot be put on a level with the Creator. Distinguish between Him who made, and that which He made. The bench cannot be put on a level with the mechanic, nor the pillar with its builder; and yet the mechanic, though he made the bench, did not himself create the wood. But the Lord our God, in His omnipotence and by the Word, made what He made. He had no materials out of which to make all that He made, and yet He made it. For they were made because He willed it, they were made because He said it; but the things made cannot be compared with the Maker. If thou seekest a proper subject of comparison, turn thy mind to the only-begotten Son. How, then, were the Jews the children of the devil? By imitation, not by birth. Listen to the usual language of the Holy Scriptures. The prophet says to those very Jews, “Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite.”781 The Amorites were not a nation that gave origin to the Jews. The Hittites also were themselves of a nation altogether different from the race of the Jews. But because the Amorites and Hittites were impious, and the Jews imitated their impieties, they found parents for themselves, not of whom they were born, but in whose damnation they should share, because following their customs. But perhaps you inquire, Whence is the devil himself? From the same source certainly as the other angels. But the other angels continued in their obedi ence. He, by disobedience and pride, fell as an angel, and became a devil.

11. But listen now to what the Lord says: “Ye,” said He, “are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” This is how ye are his children, because such are your lusts, not because ye are born of him. What are his lusts? “He was a murderer from the beginning.” This it is that explains, “the lusts of your father ye will do.” “Ye seek to kill me, a man that telleth you the truth.” He, too, had ill-will to man, and slew man. For the devil, in his ill-will to man, assuming the guise of a serpent, spoke to the woman, and from the woman instilled his poison into the man. They died by listening to the devil,782 whom they would not have listened to had they but listened to the Lord; for man, having his place between Him who created and him who was fallen, ought to have obeyed the Creator, not the deceiver. Therefore “he was a murderer from the beginning.” Look at the kind of murder, brethren. The devil is called a murderer not as armed with a sword, or girded with steel. He came to man, sowed his evil suggestions, and slew him. Think not, then, that thou art not a murderer when thou persuadest thy brother to evil. If thou persuadest thy brother to evil, thou slayest him. And to let thee know that thou slayest him, listen to the psalm: “The sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.”783 Ye, then, “will do the lusts of your father;” and so ye go madly after the flesh, because ye cannot go after the spirit. “He was a murderer from the beginning;” at least in the case of the first of mankind. From the very time that murder [manslaughter] could possibly be committed, he was a murderer manslayer. Only from the time that man was made could manslaughter be committed. For man could not be slain unless man was previously made. Therefore, “he was a murderer from the beginning.” And whence a murderer? “And he stood abode not in the truth.” Therefore he was in the truth, and fell by not standing in it. And why “stood he not in the truth”? “Because the truth is not in him;” not as in Christ. In such a way is the truth [in Him], that Christ Himself is the Truth. If, then, he had stood in the truth, he would have stood in Christ; but “he abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.”

1. In that lesson of the holy Gospel which has been read to-day, from power we learn patience. For what are we as servants to the Lord, as sinners to the Just One, as creatures to the Creator? Howbeit, just as in what we are evil, we are so of ourselves; so in whatever respects we are good, we are so of Him, and through Him. And nothing does man so seek as he does power. He has great power in the Lord Christ; but let him first imitate His patience, that he may attain to power. Who of us would listen with patience if it were said to him, “Thou hast a devil”? as was said to Him, who was not only bringing men to salvation, but also subjecting devils to His authority.

2. For when the Jews had said, “Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” of these two charges cast at Him, He denied the one, but not the other. For He answered and said, “I have not a devil.” He did not say, I am not a Samaritan; and yet the two charges had been made. Although He returned not cursing with cursing, although He met not slander with slander, yet was it proper for Him to deny the one charge and not to deny the other. And not without a purpose, brethren. For Samaritan means keeper.787 He knew that He was our keeper. For “He that keepeth Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth;”788 and, “Except the Lord keep the city, they wake in vain who keep it.”789 He then is our Keeper who is our Creator. For did it belong to Him to redeem us, and would it not be His to preserve us? Finally, that you may know more fully the hidden reason790 why He ought not to have denied that He was a Samaritan, call to mind that well-known parable, where a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who wounded him severely, and left him half dead on the road. A priest came along and took no notice of him. A Levite came up, and he also passed on his way. A certain Samaritan came up—He who is our Keeper. He went up to the wounded man. He exercised mercy, and did a neighbor’s part to one whom He did not account an alien.791 To this, then, He only replied that He had not a devil, but not that He was not a Samaritan.

3. And then after such an insult, this was all that He said of His own glory: “But I honor,” said He, “my Father, and ye dishonor me.” That is, I honor not myself, that ye may not think 787 Samaria, Hebrew שֹׁמְרֹון , literally, “a keep,” from שמַָׁר to keep, to guard; hence, according to Augustin, “Samaritan,” שֹׁמְרֹנִי , a keeper, a guardian.—Tr. 788 Ps. cxxi. 4. 789 Ps. cxxvii. 1. 790 Mysterium. 791 Luke x. 30–37. me arrogant. I have One to honor; and did ye recognize me, just as I honor the Father, so would ye also honor me. I do what I ought; ye do not what ye ought.

4. “And I,” said He, “seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.” Whom does He wish to be understood but the Father? How, then, does He say in another place, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son,”792 while here He says, “I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth”? If, then, the Father judgeth, how is it that He judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son?

5. In order to solve this point, attend. It may be solved by [quoting] a similar mode of speaking. Thou hast it written, “God tempteth not any man;”793 and again thou hast it written, “The Lord your God tempteth you, to know whether you love Him.”794 Just the point in dispute, you see. For how does God tempt not any man, and how does the Lord your God tempt you, to know whether ye love Him? It is also written, “There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear;”795 and in another place it is written, “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever.”796 Here also is the point in dispute. For how does perfect love cast out fear, if the fear of the Lord, which is clean, endureth for ever?

6. We are to understand, then, that there are two kinds of temptation: one, that deceives; the other, that proves. As regards that which deceives, God tempteth not any man; as regards that which proves, the Lord your God tempteth you, that He may know whether ye love Him. But here again, also, there arises another question, how He tempteth that He may know, from whom, prior to the temptation, nothing can be hid. It is not that God is ignorant; but it is said, that He may know, that is, that He may make you to know. Such modes of speaking are found both in our ordinary conversation, and in writers of eloquence. Let me say a word on our style of conversation. We speak of a blind ditch, not because it has lost its eyes, but because by lying hid it makes us blind to its existence. One speaks of “bitter lupins,” that is, “sour;” not that they themselves are bitter, but because they occasion bitterness to those who taste them.797 And so there are also expressions of this sort in Scripture. Those who take the trouble to attain a knowledge of such points have no trouble in solving them. And so “the Lord your God tempts you, that He may know.” What is this, “that He may know”? That He may make you to know “if you love Him.” Job was unknown to himself, but he was 792 Chap. v. 22. 793 Jas. i. 13. 794 Deut. xiii. 3. 795 1 John iv. 18. 796 Ps. xix. 9. 797 Virg. Georg. lib. i. 75: Tristes lupinos non quia ipsi sunt tristes, sed quia gustati contristant, hoc est, tristes faciunt. not unknown to God. He led the tempter into [Job], and brought him to a knowledge of himself.

7. What then of the two fears? There is a servile fear, and there is a clean chaste fear: there is the fear of suffering punishment, there is another fear of losing righteousness. That fear of suffering punishment is slavish. What great thing is it to fear punishment? The vilest slave and the cruelest robber do so. It is no great thing to fear punishment, but great it is to love righteousness. Has he, then, who loves righteousness no fear? Certainly he has; not of incurring of punishment, but of losing righteousness. My brethren, assure yourselves of it, and draw your inference from that which you love. Some one of you is fond of money. Can I find any one, think you, who is not so? Yet from this very thing which he loves he may understand my meaning. He is afraid of loss: why is he so? Because he loves money. In the same measure that he loves money, is he afraid of losing it. So, then, some one is found to be a lover of righteousness, who at heart is much more afraid of its loss, who dreads more being stripped of his righteousness, than thou of thy money. This is the fear that is clean—this [the fear] that endureth for ever. It is not this that love makes away with, or casteth out, but rather embraces it, and keeps it with it, and possesses it as a companion. For we come to the Lord that we may see Him face to face. And there it is this pure fear that preserves us; for such a fear as that does not disturb, but reassure. The adulterous woman fears the coming of her husband, and the chaste one fears her husband’s departure. 8. Therefore, as, according to one kind of temptation, “God tempteth not any man;” but according to another, “The Lord your God tempteth you;” and according to one kind of fear, “there is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear;” but according to another, “the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever;”—so also, in this passage, according to one kind of judgment, “the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son;” and according to another, “I,” said He, “seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.”

9. This point may also be solved from the word itself. Thou hast penal judgment spoken of in the Gospel: “He that believeth not is judged798 already;” and in another place, “The hour is coming, when those who are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.”799 You see how He has put judgment for condemnation and punishment. And yet if judgment were always to be taken for condemnation, should we 798 Judicatus. John iii. 18. 799 Judicium. John v. 28, 29. ever have heard in the psalm, “Judge me, O God”? In the former place, judgment is used in the sense of inflicting pain; here, it is used in the sense of discernment.800 How so? Just because so expounded by him who says, “Judge me, O God.” For read, and see what follows. What is this “Judge me, O God,” but just what he adds, “and discern801 my cause against an unholy nation”?802 Because then it was said, “Judge me, O God, and discern [the true merits of] my cause against an unholy nation;” similarly now said the Lord Christ, “I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.” How is there “one that seeketh and judgeth”? There is the Father, who discerns and distinguishes between my glory and yours. For ye glory in the spirit of this present world. Not so do I who say to the Father, “Father, glorify Thou me with that glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”803 What is “that glory”? One altogether different from human inflation. Thus doth the Father judge. And so to “judge” is to “discern.”804 And what does He discern? The glory of His Son from the glory of mere men; for to that end is it said, “God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.”805 For not because He became man is He now to be compared with us. We, as men, are sinful, He is sinless; we, as men, inherit from Adam both death and delinquency, He received from the Virgin mortal flesh, but no iniquity. In fine, neither because we wish it are we born, nor as long as we wish it do we live, nor in the way that we wish it do we die: but He, before He was born, chose of whom He should be born; at His birth He brought about the adoration of the Magi; He grew as an infant, and showed Himself God by His miracles, and surpassed man in His weakness. Lastly, He chose also the manner of His death, that is, to be hung on the cross, and to fasten the cross itself on the foreheads of believers, so that the Christian may say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”806 On the very cross, when He pleased, He made His body be taken down, and departed; in the very sepulchre, as long as it pleased Him, He lay; and, when He pleased, He arose as from a bed. So, then, brethren, in respect to His very form as a servant (for who can speak of that other form as it ought to be spoken of, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”?)—in respect, I say, to His very form as a servant, the difference is great between the glory of Christ and 800 Discretionem, discerne,—legal terms, implying the judicial expiscation and discriminating of the real facts and merits of a case, by sifting the evidence and separating the true from the false. 801 See previous note. 802 Ps. xliii. 1. 803 John xvii. 5. 804 Discretionem, discerne,—legal terms, implying the judicial expiscation and discriminating of the real facts and merits of a case, by sifting the evidence and separating the true from the false. 805 Ps. xlv. 7. 806 Gal. vi. 14. the glory of other men. Of that glory He spoke, when the devil-possessed heard Him say, “I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.”

10. But what sayest Thou, O Lord, of Thyself? “Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” Ye say, “Thou hast a devil.” I call you to life: keep my word and ye shall not die. They heard, “He shall never see death who keepeth my word,” and were angry, because already dead in that death from which they might have escaped. “Then said the Jews, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.” See how Scripture speaks: “He shall not see,” that is, “taste of death.” “He shall see death—he shall taste of death.” Who seeth? Who tasteth? What eyes has a man to see with when he dies? When death at its coming shuts up those very eyes from seeing aught, how is it said, “he shall not see death”? With what palate, also, and with what jaws can death be tasted, that its savor may be discovered? When it taketh every sense away, what will remain in the palate? But here, “he will see,” and “he will taste,” are used for that which is really the case, he will know by experience.

11. Thus spake the Lord (it is scarcely sufficient to say), as one dying to dying men; for “to the Lord also belong the issues from death,”807 as saith the psalm. Seeing, then, He was both speaking to those destined to die, and speaking as one appointed to death Himself, what mean His words, “He who keepeth my saying shall never see death;” save that the Lord saw another death, from which He was come to deliver us—the second death, death eternal, the death of hell,808 the death of damnation with the devil and his angels? This is real death; for that other is only a removal. What is that other death? The leaving of the body—the laying down of a heavy burden; provided another burden be not carried away, to drag the man headlong to hell. Of that real death then did the Lord say, “He who keepeth my saying shall never see death.”

12. Let us not be frightened at that other death, but let us fear this one. But, what is very grievous, many, through a perverse fear of that other, have fallen into this. It has been said to some, Adore idols; for if you do it not, you shall be put to death: or, as Nebuchadnezzar said, If you do not, you shall be thrown into the furnace of flaming fire. Many feared and adored. Shrinking from death, they died. Through fear of the death which cannot be escaped, they fell into that which they might happily have escaped, had they not, unhappily, been afraid of that which is inevitable. As a man, thou art born—art destined to die. Whither wilt thou go to escape death? What wilt thou do to escape it? That thy Lord might comfort thee in thy necessary subjection to death, of His own good pleasure He condescended to die. When thou seest the Christ lying dead, art thou reluctant to die? Die then thou must; thou 807 Ps. lxviii. 20. 808 Gehennarum. hast no means of escape. Be it today, be it tomorrow; it is to be—the debt must be paid. What, then, does a man gain by fearing, fleeing, hiding himself from discovery by his enemy? Does he get exemption from death? No, but that he may die a little later. He gets not security against his debt, but asks a respite. Put it off as long as you please, the thing so delayed will come at last. Let us fear that death which the three men feared when they said to the king, “God is able to deliver us even from that flame; and if not,” etc.809 There was there the fear of that death which the Lord now threatens, when they said, But also if He be not willing openly to deliver us, He can crown us with victory in secret. Whence also the Lord, when on the eve of appointing martyrs and becoming the head-martyr Himself, said, “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” How “have they no more that they can do”? What if, after having slain one, they threw his body to be mangled by wild beasts, and torn to pieces by birds? Cruelty seems still to have something it can do. But to whom is it done? He has departed. The body is there, but without feeling. The tenement lies on the ground, the tenant is gone. And so “after that they have no more that they can do;” for they can do nothing to that which is without sensation. “But fear Him who hath power to destroy both body and soul, in hell fire.”810 Here is the death that He spake of when He said, “He that keepeth my saying shall never see death.” Let us keep then, brethren, His own word in faith, as those who are yet to attain to sight, when the liberty we receive has reached its fullness.

13. But those men, indignant, yet dead, and predestinated to death eternal, answered with insults, and said, “Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets.” But not in that death which the Lord meant to be understood was either Abraham dead or the prophets. For these were dead, and yet they live: those others were alive, and yet they had died. For, replying in a certain place to the Sadducees, when they stirred the question of the resurrection, the Lord Himself speaks thus: “But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read how the Lord said to Moses from the bush, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”811 If, then, they live, let us labor so to live, that after death we may be able to live with them. “Whom makest thou thyself,” they add, that thou sayest, “he shall never see death who keepeth my saying,” when thou knowest that both Abraham is dead and the prophets?

14. “Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing: it is my Father that glorifieth me.” He said this on account of their saying, “Whom makest thou thyself?” For He refers His glory to the Father, of whom it is that He is God. From this expression also the Arians 809 Dan. iii. 16–18. 810 “In the gehenna of fire.” Matt. x. 28, and Luke xii. 4, 5. 811 Matt. xxii. 31, 32; Ex. iii. 6. sometimes revile our faith, and say, See, the Father is greater; for at all events He glorifies the Son. Heretic, hast thou not read of the Son Himself also saying that He glorifies His Father?812 If both He glorifieth the Son, and the Son glorifieth the Father, lay aside thy stubbornness, acknowledge the equality, correct thy perversity.

15. “It is,” then, said He, “my Father that glorifieth me; of whom ye say, that He is your God: and ye have not known Him.” See, my brethren, how He shows that God Himself is the Father of the Christ, who was announced also to the Jews. I say so for this reason, that now again there are certain heretics who say that the God revealed in the Old Testament is not the Father of Christ, but some prince or other, I know not what, of evil angels. There are Manicheans who say so; there are Marcionites who say so. There are also, perhaps, other heretics, whom it is either unnecessary to mention, or all of whom I cannot at present recall; yet there have not been wanting those who said this. Attend, then, that you may have something also to affirm against such. Christ the Lord calleth Him His Father whom they called their God, and did not know; for had they known [that God] Himself they would have received His Son. “But I,” said He, “know Him.” To those judging after the flesh He might have seemed from such words to be self-assuming, because He said, “I know Him.” But see what follows: “If I should say that I know Him not, I shall be a liar like unto you.” Let not, then, self-assumption be so guarded against as to cause the relinquishment of truth. “But I know Him, and keep His saying.” The saying of the Father He was speaking as Son; and He Himself was the Word of the Father, that was speaking to men.

16. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw, and was glad.” Abraham’s seed, Abraham’s Creator, bears a great testimony to Abraham. “Abraham rejoiced,” He says, “to see my day.” He did not fear, but “rejoiced to see it.” For in him there was the love that casteth out fear.813 He says not, rejoiced because he saw; but “rejoiced that he might see.” Believing, at all events, he rejoiced in hope to see with the understanding. “And he saw.” And what more could the Lord Jesus Christ say, or what more ought He to have said? “And he saw,” He says, “and was glad.” Who can unfold this joy, my brethren? If those rejoiced whose bodily eyes were opened by the Lord, what joy was his who saw with the eyes of his soul the light ineffable, the abiding Word, the brilliance that dazzles the minds of the pious, the unfailing Wisdom, God abiding with the Father, and at some time come in the flesh and yet not to withdraw from the bosom of the Father? All this did Abraham see. For in saying “my day,” it may be uncertain of what He spake; whether the day of the Lord in time, when He should come the flesh, or that day of the Lord which knows not a dawn, and knows no decline. But for my part I doubt not that father Abraham knew it all. And where shall I find it out? Ought the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ to satisfy us? Let us suppose that we 812 Chap. xvii. 4. 813 1 John iv. 18. cannot find it out, for perhaps it is difficult to say in what sense it is clear that Abraham “rejoiced to see the day” of Christ, “and saw it, and was glad.” And though we find it not, can the Truth have lied? Let us believe the Truth, and cherish no doubt of Abraham’s merited rewards.814 Yet listen to one passage that occurs to me meanwhile. When father Abraham sent his servant to seek a wife for his son Isaac, he bound him by this oath, to fulfill faithfully what he was commanded, and know also for himself what to do. For it was a great matter that was in hand when marriage was sought for Abraham’s seed. But that the servant might apprehend what Abraham knew, that it was not offspring after the flesh he desired, nor anything of a carnal kind concerning his race that was referred to, he said to the servant whom he sent, “Put thy hand under my thigh, and swear by the God of heaven.”815 What connection has the God of heaven with Abraham’s thigh? Already you understand the mystery:816 by thigh is meant race. And what was that swearing, but the signifying that of Abraham’s race would the God of heaven come in the flesh? Fools find fault with Abraham because he said, Put thy hand under my thigh. Those who find fault with Christ’s flesh find fault with Abraham’s conduct. But let us, brethren, if we acknowledge the flesh of Christ as worthy of veneration, despise not that thigh, but receive it as spoken of prophetically. For a prophet also was Abraham. Whose prophet? Of his own seed, and of his Lord. To his own seed he pointed in saying, “Put thy hand under my thigh.” To his Lord he pointed in adding, “and swear by the God of heaven.”

17. The angry Jews replied, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” And the Lord: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was made, I am.”817 Weigh the words, and get a knowledge of the mystery. “Before Abraham was made.” Understand, that “was made” refers to human formation; but “am” to the Divine essence. “He was made,” because Abraham was a creature. He did not say, Before Abraham was, I was; but, “Before Abraham was made,” who was not made save by me, “I am.” Nor did He say this, Before Abraham was made I was made; for “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;”818 and “in the beginning was the Word.”819 “Before Abraham was made, I am.” Recognize the Creator—distinguish the creature. He who spake was made the seed of Abraham; and that Abraham might be made, He Himself was before Abraham.

18. Hence, as if by the most open of all insults thrown at Abraham, they were now excited to greater bitterness. Of a certainty it seemed to them that Christ the Lord had uttered 814 Meritis. 815 Gen. xxiv. 2–4. 816 Sacramentum. 817 Antequam Abraham fieret ego sum. Greek, “πρὶν ’Αβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγώ εἰμι.” 818 Gen. i. 1. 819 Chap. i. 1. blasphemy in saying, “Before Abraham was made, I am.” “Therefore took they up stones to cast at Him.” To what could so great hardness have recourse, save to its like? “But Jesus” acts as man, as one in the form of a servant, as lowly, as about to suffer, about to die, about to redeem us with His blood; not as He who is—not as the Word in the beginning, and the Word with God. For when they took up stones to cast at Him, what great thing were it had they been instantly swallowed up in the gaping earth, and found the inhabitants of hell in place of stones? It were not a great thing to God; but better was it that patience should be commended than power exerted. Therefore “He hid Himself” from them, that He might not be stoned. As man, He fled from the stones; but woe to those from whose stony hearts God has fled?

1. We have just read the long lesson of the man born blind, whom the Lord Jesus restored to the light; but were we to attempt handling the whole of it, and considering, according to our ability, each passage in a way proportionate to its worth, the day would be insufficient. Wherefore I ask and warn your Charity not to require any words of ours on those passages whose meaning is manifest; for it would be too protracted to linger at each. I proceed, therefore, to set forth briefly the mystery of this blind man’s enlightenment. All, certainly, that was done by our Lord Jesus Christ, both works and words, are worthy of our astonishment and admiration: His works, because they are facts; His words, because they are signs. If we reflect, then, on what is signified by the deed here done, that blind man is the human race; for this blindness had place in the first man, through sin, from whom we all draw our origin, not only in respect of death, but also of unrighteousness. For if unbelief is blindness, and faith enlightenment, whom did Christ find a believer at His coming? seeing that the apostle, belonging himself to the family of the prophets, says: “And we also in times past were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”820 If “children of wrath,” then children of vengeance, children of punishment, children of hell. For how is it “by nature,” save that through the first man sinning moral evil rooted itself in us as a nature? If evil has so taken root within us, every man is born mentally blind. For if he sees, he has no need of a guide. If he does need one to guide and enlighten him, then is he blind from his birth.

2. The Lord came: what did He do? He set forth a great mystery. “He spat on the ground,” He made clay of His spittle; for the Word was made flesh.821 “And He anointed the eyes of the blind man.” The anointing had taken place, and yet he saw not. He sent him to the pool which is called Siloam. But it was the evangelist’s concern to call our attention to the name of this pool; and he adds, “Which is interpreted, Sent.” You understand now who it is that was sent; for had He not been sent, none of us would have been set free from iniquity. Accordingly he washed his eyes in that pool which is interpreted, Sent—he was baptized in Christ. If, therefore, when He baptized him in a manner in Himself, He then enlightened him; when He anointed Him, perhaps He made him a catechumen.822 In many different ways indeed may the profound meaning of such a sacramental act be set forth and handled; but let this suffice your Charity. You have heard a great mystery. Ask a man, Are you a Christian? His answer to you is, I am not, if he is a pagan or a Jew. But if he says, I am; you 820 Eph. ii. 3. 821 Chap. i. 14. 822 The name given to one who was under instruction for baptism, and for entrance into the full privileges of church membership. inquire again of him, Are you a catechumen or a believer? If he reply, A catechumen; he has been anointed, but not yet washed. But how anointed? Inquire, and he will answer you. Inquire of him in whom he believes. In that very respect in which he is a catechumen he says, In Christ. See, I am speaking in a way both to the faithful and to catechumens. What have I said of the spittle and the clay? That the Word was made flesh. This even catechumens hear; but that to which they have been anointed is not all they need; let them hasten to the font if they are in search of enlightenment.

3. And now, because of certain points in the lesson before us, let us run over the words of the Lord, and of the whole lesson itself rather than make them a theme of discourse. “As He passed out, He saw a man who was blind;” blind, not from any cause whatever, but “from his birth.” “And His disciples asked Him, Rabbi.” You know that “Rabbi” is Master. They called Him Master, because they desired to learn. The question, at all events, they proposed to the Lord as a master, “Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents,” that he was born blind. What is this that He has said? If no man is sinless, were the parents of this blind man without sin? Was he himself either born without original sin, or had he committed none in the course of his lifetime? Because his eyes were closed, had his lusts lost their wakefulness? How many evils are done by the blind? From what evil does an evil mind abstain, even though the eyes are closed? He could not see, but he knew how to think, and perchance to lust after something which his blindness hindered him from attaining, and so still in his heart to be judged by the searcher of hearts. If, then, both his parents had sin, and the man himself had sin, wherefore said the Lord, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents,” but only in respect to the point on which he was questioned, “that he was born blind”? For his parents had sin; but not by reason of the sin itself did it come about that he was born blind. If, then, it was not through the parents’ sin that he was born blind, why was he born blind? Listen to the Master as He teaches. He seeks one who believes, to give him understanding. He Himself tells us the reason why that man was born blind: “Neither hath this man sinned,” He says, “nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

4. And then, what follows? “I must work the works of Him that sent me.” See, here is that sent one [Siloam], wherein the blind man washed his face. And see what He said: “I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day.” Recall to thy mind the way in which He gives universal glory to Him of whom He is:823 for that One has the Son who is of Him; He Himself has no One of whom He is.824 But wherefore, Lord, saidst Thou, “While it is day”? Hearken why He did so. “The night cometh when no man can work.” Not even Thou, Lord. Will that night have such power that not even Thou, whose work the night is, 823 Or, “from whom He proceeds.” The Son is of the Father, but the Father is of none. 824 Or, “from whom He proceeds.” The Son is of the Father, but the Father is of none. wilt be able to work therein? For I think, Lord Jesus, nay I do not think, but believe and hold it sure, that Thou wast there when God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”825 For if He made it by the Word, He made it by Thee: and therefore it is said, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was nothing made.”826 “God divided between the light and the darkness: the light He called Day, and the darkness He called Night.”827

5. What is that night wherein, when it comes, no one shall be able to work? Hear what the day is, and then thou wilt understand what the night is. But how shall we hear what the day is? Let Himself tell us: “As long as I am in this world, I am the light of the world.” See, He Himself is the day. Let the blind man wash his eyes in the day, that he may behold the day. “As long,” He says, “as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Then will it be night of a kind unknown to me, when Christ will no longer be there; and so no one will be able to work. An inquiry remains, my brethren; patiently listen to me as I inquire. With you I inquire: With you shall I find Him to whom my inquiry is addressed. We are agreed; for it is expressly and definitely stated that the Lord proclaimed Himself in this place as the day, that is, the light of the world. “As long,” He says, “as I am in this world, I am the light of the world.” Therefore He Himself works. But how long is He in this world? Are we to think, brethren, that He was here then, and is here no longer? If we think so, then already, after the Lord’s ascension, did that fearful night begin, when no one can work. If that night began after the Lord’s ascension, how was it that the apostles wrought so much? Was that the night when the Holy Spirit came, and, filling all who were in one place, gave them the power of speaking in the tongues of every nation? 828 Was it night when that lame man was made whole at the word of Peter, or rather, at the word of the Lord dwelling in Peter?829 Was it night when, as the disciples were passing by, the sick were laid in couches, that they might be touched at least by their shadow as they passed?830 Yet, when the Lord was here, there was no one made whole by His shadow as He passed; but He Himself had said to the disciples, “Greater things than these shall ye do.”831 Yes, the Lord had said, “Greater things than these shall ye do;” but let not flesh and blood exalt itself: let such hear Him also saying, “Without me ye can do nothing.”832

1. Our Lord’s discourse to the Jews began in connection with the man who was born blind and was restored to sight. Your Charity therefore ought to know and be advised that today’s lesson is interwoven with that one. For when the Lord had said, “For judgment I am come into this world; that they who see not might see, and they who see might be made blind,”—which, on the occasion of its reading, we expounded according to our ability,—some of the Pharisees said, “Are we blind also?” To whom He replied, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; [therefore] your sin remaineth.”846 To these words He added what we have been hearing today when the lesson was read.

2. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” For they declared that they were not blind; yet could they see only by being the sheep of Christ. Whence claimed they possession of the light, who were acting as thieves against the day? Because, then, of their vain and proud and incurable arrogance, did the Lord Jesus subjoin these words, wherein He has given us also salutary lessons, if we lay them to heart. For there are many who, according to a custom of this life, are called good people,—good men, good women, innocent, and observers as it were of what is commanded in the law; paying respect to their parents, abstaining from adultery, doing no murder, committing no theft, giving no false witness against any one, and observing all else that the law requires—yet are not Christians; and for the most part ask boastfully, like these men, “Are we blind also?” But just because all these things that they do, and know not to what end they should have reference, they do to no purpose, the Lord has set forth in today’s lesson the similitude of His own flock, and of the door that leads into the sheepfold. Pagans may say, then, We live well. If they enter not by the door, what good will that do them, whereof they boast? For to this end ought good living to benefit every one, that it may be given him to live for ever: for to whomsoever eternal life is not given, of what benefit is the living well? For they ought not to be spoken of as even living well, who either from blindness know not the end of a right life, or in their pride despise it. But no one has the true and certain hope of living always, unless he know the life, that it is Christ; and enter by the gate into the sheepfold.

3. Such, accordingly, for the most part seek to persuade men to live well, and yet not to be Christians. By another way they wish to climb up, to steal and to kill, not as the shepherd, to preserve and to save. And thus there have been certain philosophers, holding many subtle discussions about the virtues and the vices, dividing, defining, drawing out to their close the most acute processes of reasoning, filling books, brandishing their wisdom with rattling 846 Chap. ix. 39–41. jaws; who would even dare to say to people, Follow us, keep to our sect, if you would live happily. But they had not entered by the door: they wished to destroy, to slay, and to murder.

4. What shall I say of such? Look, the Pharisees themselves were in the habit of reading, and in what they read, their voices re-echoed the Christ, they hoped He would come, and recognized Him not when present; they boasted, even they, of being amongst those who saw, that is, among the wise, and they disowned the Christ, and entered not in by the door. Therefore would such also, if they chanced to seduce any, seduce them to be slaughtered and murdered, not to be brought into liberty. Let us leave these also to themselves, and look at those who glory in the name of Christ Himself, and see whether even they perchance are entering in by the door.

5. For there are countless numbers who not only boast that they see, but would have it appear that they are enlightened by Christ; yet are they heretics. Have even they somehow entered by the gate? Surely not. Sabellius says, He who is the Son is Himself the Father; but if the Son, then is there no Father. He enters not by the door, who asserts that the Son is the Father. Arius says, The Father is one thing, the Son is another thing. He would say rightly if he said, Another person; but not another thing.847 For when he says, Another thing, he contradicts Him who says in his hearing, “I and my Father are One.”848 Neither does he therefore enter by the door; for he preaches a Christ such as he fabricates for himself, not such as the truth declares Him. Thou hast the name, thou hast not the reality. Christ is the name of something; keep hold of the thing itself, if thou wouldst benefit by the name. Another, I know not from whence, says with Photinus,849 Christ is mere man; He is not God. He enters not in by the door, for Christ is both man and God. But why need I make many references, and enumerate the many vanities of heretics? Keep hold of this, that Christ’s sheepfold is the Catholic Church. Whoever would enter the sheepfold, let him enter by the door, let him preach the true Christ. Not only let him preach the true Christ, but seek Christ’s glory, not his own; for many, by seeking their own glory, have scattered Christ’s sheep, instead of gathering them. For Christ the Lord is a low gateway: he who enters by this gateway must humble himself, that he may be able to enter with head unharmed. But he that humbleth not, but exalteth himself, wishes to climb over the wall; and he that climbeth over the wall, is exalted only to fall.

6. Thus far, however, the Lord Jesus speaks in covert language; not as yet is He understood. He names the door, He names the sheepfold, He names the sheep: all this He sets forth, but does not yet explain. Let us read on then, for He is coming to those words, wherein He may think proper to give us some explanation of what He has said; from the explanation 847 Or, “substance:” Alius, non aliud. 848 Ver. 38, unum; lit. “one thing or substance.” 849 Bishop of Sirmium, who published his heretical opinions about A.D. 343. of which He will perhaps enable us to understand also what He has not explained. For He gives us what is plain, for food; what is obscure, for exercise. “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way.” Woe to the wretch, for he is sure to fall! Let him then be humble, let him enter by the door: let him walk on the level ground, and he shall not stumble. “The same,” He says, “is a thief and a robber.” The sheep of another he desires to call his own sheep,—his own, that is, as carried off by stealth, for the purpose, not of saving, but of slaying them. Therefore is he a thief, because what is another’s he calls his own; a robber, because what he has stolen he also kills. “But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep: to him the porter openeth.” Concerning this porter we shall make inquiry, when we have heard of the Lord Himself what is the door and who is the shepherd. “And the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name.” For He has their names written in the book of life. “He calleth his own sheep by name.” Hence, says the apostle, “The Lord knoweth them that are His.”850 “And he leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger do they not follow, but do flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.” These are veiled words, full of topics of inquiry, pregnant with sacramental signs. Let us follow then, and listen to the Master as He makes some opening into these obscurities; and perhaps by the opening He makes, He will cause us to enter.

7. “This parable spake Jesus unto them; but they understood not what He spake unto them.” Nor we also, perhaps. What, then, is the difference between them and us, before even we can understand these words? This, that we on our part knock, that it may be opened unto us; while they, by disowning Christ, refused to enter for salvation, and preferred remaining outside to be destroyed. In as far, then, as we listen to these words with a pious mind, in as far as, before we understand them, we believe them to be true and divine, we stand at a great distance from these men. For when two persons are listening to the words of the gospel, the one impious, the other pious, and some of these are such as neither perhaps understands, the one says, It has said nothing; the other says, It has said the truth, and what it has said is good, but we do not understand it. This latter, because he believes, now knocks, that he may be worthy to have it opened up to him, if he continue knocking; but the other still hears the words, “If ye believe not, ye shall not understand.”851 Why do I draw your attention to this? Even for this reason, that when I have explained as I can these obscure words, or, because of their great abstruseness, I have either myself failed to arrive at an understanding of them, or wanted the faculty of explaining what I do understand, or every one has been so dull as not to follow me, even when I give the explanation, yet should he 850 2 Tim. ii. 19. 851 Isa. vii. 9, according to the Septuagint, which, however, can hardly be said here to give the meaning of the Hebrew text. Our English version gives a pretty correct translation of the latter.—Tr. not despair of himself; but continue in faith, walk on in the way, and hear the apostle saying, “And if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless whereto we have already attained, let us walk therein.”852

8. Let us begin, then, with hearing His exposition of what we have heard Him propounding. “Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.” See, He has opened the very door which was shut in His former description. He Himself is the door. We have come to know it; let us enter, or rejoice that we are already within. “All that ever came are thieves and robbers.” What is this, Lord, “All that ever came”? How so hast Thou not come? But understand; I said, “All that ever came,” meaning, of course, exclusive of myself.853 Let us recollect then. Before His coming came the prophets: were they thieves and robbers? God forbid. They did not come apart from Him, for they came with Him. When about to come, He sent heralds, but retained possession of the hearts of His messengers. Do you wish to know that they came with Him, who is Himself ever existent? Certainly He assumed human flesh at the time appointed. But what means that “ever”? “In the beginning was the Word.” 854 With Him, therefore, came those who came with the word of God. “I am,” said He, “the way, and the truth, and the life.”855 If He is the truth, with Him came those who were truthful. As many, therefore, as were apart from Him, were “thieves and robbers,” that is, had come to steal and to destroy.

9. “But the sheep did not hear them.” This is a more important point, “the sheep did not hear them.” Before the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, when He came in humility in the flesh, righteous men preceded, believing in the same way in Him who was to come, as we believe in Him who has come. Times vary, but not faith. For verbs themselves also vary with the tense, when they are variously declined. He is to come, has one sound; He has come, has another: there is a change in the sound between He is to come, and He has come:856 yet the same faith unites both,—both those who believed that He would come, and those who have believed that He is come. At different times, indeed, but by the one doorway of faith, that is, by Christ, do we see that both have entered. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin, that He came in the flesh, suffered, rose again, ascended into heaven: 852 Phil. iii. 15, 16. 853 Præter me: besides, apart from, myself. These words are an explanation suggested by Augustin himself. The words, “πρὸ ἐμοῦ,” “before me,” of the received text, which are undoubtedly genuine, were wanting in the version here used by Augustin, just as in the Vulgate. It is supposed that the authors of these versions had been tempted to omit them, because of the use made of them by some early heretics to throw discredit on the Old Testament Scriptures.—Tr. 854 Chap. i. 1. 855 Chap. xiv. 6. 856 Venturus est, et venit. all this, just as you hear verbs of the past tense, we believe to be already fulfilled. In that faith a partnership is also held with us by those fathers who believed that He would be born of the Virgin, would suffer, would rise again, would ascend into heaven; for to such the apostle pointed when he said, “But we having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.”857 The prophet said, “I believed, therefore have I spoken:”858 the apostle says, “We also believe, and therefore speak.” But to let you know that their faith is one, listen to him saying, “Having the same spirit of faith, we also believe.” So also in another place, “For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea: and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink.” The Red Sea signifies baptism; Moses, their leader through the Red Sea, signifies Christ; the people, who passed through, signify believers; the death of the Egyptians signifies the abolition of sins. Under different signs there is the same faith. It is with different signs as with different words [verbs]; for verbs change their sounds through the tenses, and verbs are indeed nothing else than signs. For they are words because of what they signify: take away the meaning from a word,859 and it becomes a senseless sound. All, therefore, have become signs. Was not the same faith theirs by whom these signs were employed, and by whom were foretold in prophecy the very things which we believe? Certainly it was: but they believed that they were yet to come, and we, that they have come. In like manner does he also say, “They all drank the same spiritual drink;” “the same spiritual,” for it was not the same material [drink]. For what was it they drank? “For they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ.”860 See, then, how that while the faith remained, the signs were varied. There the rock was Christ; to us that is Christ which is placed on the altar of God. And they, as a great sacramental sign of the same Christ, drank the water flowing from the rock: what we drink is known to believers. If one’s thoughts turn to the visible form, the thing is different; if to the meaning that addresses the understanding, they drank the same spiritual drink. As many, then, at that time as believed, whether Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or Moses, or the other patriarchs or prophets who foretold of Christ, were sheep, and heard Christ. His voice, and not another’s, did they hear. The Judge was present in the person of the Crier. For even when the judge speaks through the crier, the clerk861 does not make it, The crier said; but 857 2 Cor. iv. 13. 858 Ps. cxvi. 10. 859 Augustin seems here to use verbum sometimes in its grammatical, sometimes in its general, meaning.—Tr. 860 1 Cor. x. 1–4. 861 Exceptor: the person employed to take down notes of the decisions, sentences, etc., in the public courts or assemblies.—Tr. the judge said. But others there are whom the sheep did not hear, in whom Christ’s voice had no place,—wanderers, uttering falsehoods, prating inanities, fabricating vanities, misleading the miserable.

10. Why is it, then, that I have said, This is a more important point? What is there about it obscure and difficult to understand? Listen, I beseech you. See, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself came and preached. Much more surely was that the Shepherd’s voice which was uttered by the very mouth of the Shepherd. For if the Shepherd’s voice came through the prophets, how much more did the Shepherd’s own tongue give utterance to the Shepherd’s voice? Yet all did not hear Him. But what are we to think? Those who did hear, were they sheep? Lo? Judas heard, and was a wolf: he followed, but, clad in sheep-skin, he was laying snares for the Shepherd. Some, again, of those who crucified Christ did not hear, and yet were sheep; for such He saw in the crowd when He said, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He.”862 Now, how is this question to be solved? They that are not sheep do hear, and they that are sheep do not hear. Some, who are wolves, follow the Shepherd’s voice; and some, that are sheep, contradict it. Last of all, the sheep slay the Shepherd. The point is solved; for some one in reply says, But when they did not hear, as yet they were not sheep, they were then wolves: the voice, when it was heard, changed them, and out of wolves transformed them into sheep; and so, when they became sheep, they heard, and found the Shepherd, and followed Him. They built their hopes on the Shepherd’s promises, because they obeyed His precepts.

11. That question has been solved in a way, and perhaps satisfies every one. But I bare still a subject of concern, and what concerns me I shall impart to you, that, in some sort inquiring together, I may through His revelation be found worthy with you to attain the solution. Hear, then, what it is that moves me. By the Prophet Ezekiel the Lord rebukes the shepherds, and among other things says of the sheep, “The wandering sheep have ye not recalled.” 863 He both declares it a wanderer, and calls it a sheep. If, while wandering, it was a sheep, whose voice was it hearing to lead it astray? For doubtless it would not be straying were it hearing the shepherd’s voice: but it strayed just because it heard another’s voice; it heard the voice of the thief and the robber. Surely the sheep do not hear the voice of robbers. “Those that came,” He said,—and we are to understand, apart from me,—that is, “those that came apart from me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear them.” Lord, if the sheep did not hear them, how can the sheep wander? If the sheep hear only Thee, and Thou art the truth, whoever heareth the truth cannot certainly fall into error. But they err, and are called sheep. For if, in the very midst of their wandering, they were not called sheep, it would not be said by Ezekiel, “The wandering sheep have ye not recalled.” How is it at the 862 Chap. viii. 28. 863 Ezek. xxxiv. 4. same time a wanderer and a sheep? Has it heard the voice of another? Surely “the sheep did not hear them.” Accordingly many are just now being gathered into Christ’s fold, and from being heretics are becoming catholics. They are rescued from the thieves, and restored to the shepherds: and sometimes they murmur, and become wearied of Him that calls them back, and have no true knowledge of him that would murder them; nevertheless also, when, after a struggle, those have come who are sheep, they recognize the Shepherd’s voice, and are glad they have come, and are ashamed of their wandering. When, then, they were glorying in that state of error as in the truth, and were certainly not hearing the Shepherd’s voice, but were following another, were they sheep, or were they not? If they were sheep, how can it be the case that the sheep do not listen to aliens? If they were not sheep, wherefore the rebuke addressed to those to whom it is said, “The wandering sheep have ye not recalled”? In the case also of those already become catholic Christians, and believers of good promise, evils sometimes occur: they are seduced into error, and after their error are restored. When they were thus seduced, and were rebaptized, or after the companionship of the Lord’s fold were turned back again into their former error, were they sheep, or were they not? Certainly they were catholics. If they were faithful catholics, they were sheep. If they were sheep, how was it that they could listen to the voice of a stranger when the Lord saith, “The sheep did not hear them”?

12. You hear, brethren, the great importance of the question. I say then, “The Lord knoweth them that are His.”864 He knoweth those who were foreknown, He knoweth those who were predestinated; because it is said of Him, “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified. If God be for us, who can be against us?” Add to this: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how hath He not with Him also freely given us all things?” But what “us”? Those who are foreknown, predestinated, justified, glorified; regarding whom there follows, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?”865 Therefore “the Lord knoweth them that are His;” they are the sheep. Such sometimes do not know themselves, but the Shepherd knoweth them, according to this predestination, this foreknowledge of God, according to the election of the sheep before the foundation of the world: for so saith also the apostle, “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.”866 According, then, to this divine foreknowledge and predestination, how many sheep are outside, how many wolves within! and how many sheep are inside, how many 864 2 Tim. ii. 19. 865 Rom. vii. 29–33. 866 Eph. i. 4. wolves without! How many are now living in wantonness who will yet be chaste! how many are blaspheming Christ who will yet believe in Him! how many are giving themselves to drunkenness who will yet be sober! how many are preying on other people property who will yet freely give of their own! Nevertheless at present they are hearing the voice of another, they are following strangers. In like manner, how many are praising within who will yet blaspheme; are chaste who will yet be fornicators; are sober who will wallow hereafter in drink; are standing who will by and by fall! These are not the sheep. (For we speak of those who were predestinated,—of those whom the Lord knoweth that they are His.) And yet these, so long as they keep right, listen to the voice of Christ. Yea, these hear, the others do not; and yet, according to predestination, these are not sheep, while the others are.

13. There remains still the question, which I now think may meanwhile thus be solved. There is a voice of some kind,—there is, I say, a certain kind of voice of the Shepherd, in respect of which the sheep hear not strangers, and in respect of which those who are not sheep do not hear Christ. What a word is this! “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.”867 No one of His own is indifferent to such a voice, a stranger does not hear it: for this reason also does He announce it to the former, that he may abide perseveringly with Himself to the end; but by one who is wanting in such persevering continuance with Him, such a word remains unheard. One has come to Christ, and has heard word after word of one kind and another, all of them true, all of them salutary; and among all the rest is also this utterance, “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” He who has heard this is one of the sheep. But there was, perhaps, some one listening to it, who treated it with dislike, with coldness, and heard it as that of a stranger. If he was predestinated, he strayed for the time, but he was not lost for ever: he returns to hear what he has neglected, to do what he has heard. For if he is one of those who are predestinated, then both his very wandering and his future conversion have been foreknown by God: if he has strayed away, he will return to hear that voice of the Shepherd, and to follow Him who saith, “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” A good voice, brethren, it is; true and shepherd-like, the very voice of salvation in the tabernacles of the righteous.868 For it is easy to hear Christ, easy to praise the gospel, easy to applaud the preacher: but to endure unto the end, is peculiar to the sheep who hear the Shepherd’s voice. A temptation befalls thee, endure thou to the end, for the temptation will not endure to the end. And what is that end to which thou shalt endure? Even till thou reachest the end of thy pathway. For as long as thou hearest not Christ, He is thine adversary in the pathway, that is, in this mortal life. And what doth He say? “Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him.”869 Thou hast 867 Matt. x. 22. 868 Ps. cxviii. 15. 869 Matt. v. 25. heard, hast believed, hast agreed. If thou hast been at enmity, agree. If thou hast got the opportunity of coming to an agreement, keep not up the quarrel longer. For thou knowest not when thy way will be ended, and it is known to Him. If thou art a sheep, and if thou endurest to the end, thou shalt be saved: and therefore it is that His own despise not that voice, and strangers hear it not. According to my ability, as He gave me the power, I have either explained to you or gone over with you a subject of great profundity. If any have failed fully to understand, let him retain his piety, and the truth will be revealed: and let not those who have understood vaunt themselves as swifter at the expense of the slower, lest in their vaunting they turn out of the track, and the slower more easily attain the goal. But let all of us be guided by Him to whom we say, “Lead me, O Lord, in Thy way, and I will walk in Thy truth.” 870

14. By this, then, which the Lord hath explained, that He Himself is the door, let us find entrance to what He has set forth, but not explained. And indeed who it is that is the Shepherd, although He hath not told us in the lesson we have read to-day, yet in that which follows He very plainly tells us: “I am the good Shepherd.” And although He had not said so, whom else but Himself ought we to have understood in those words where He saith, “He that entereth in by the door is the Shepherd of the sheep. To Him the porter openeth: and the sheep hear His voice: and He calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him: for they know His voice”? For who else calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them hence unto eternal life, but He who knoweth the names of those that are fore-ordained? Hence He said to His disciples, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven;”871 for from this it is that He calleth them by name. And who else putteth them forth, save He who putteth away their sins, that, freed from their grievous fetters, they may be able to follow Him? And who hath gone before them to the place whither they are to follow Him, but He who, rising from the dead, dieth no more; and death shall have no more dominion over Him;872 and who, when He was manifest here in the flesh, said, “Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am”?873 Hence it is that He saith, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” In this He clearly shows that not only the Shepherd, but the sheep also enter in by the door.

15. But what is this, “He shall go in and out, and find pasture”? To enter indeed into the Church by Christ the door, is eminently good; but to go out of the Church, as this same John the evangelist saith in his epistle, “They went out from us, but they were not of us,”874 870 Ps. lxxxvi. 11. 871 Luke x. 20. 872 Rom. vi. 9. 873 Chap. xvii. 24. 874 1 John ii. 19. is certainly otherwise than good. Such a going out could not then be commended by the good Shepherd, when He said, “And he shall go in and out, and find pasture.” There is therefore not only some sort of entrance, but some outgoing also that is good, by the good door, which is Christ. But what is that praiseworthy and blessed outgoing? I might say, indeed, that we enter when we engage in some inward exercise of thought; and go out, when we take to some active work without: and since, as the apostle saith, Christ dwelleth in our hearts by faith,875 to enter by Christ is to give ourselves to thought in accordance with that faith; but to go out by Christ is, in accordance also with that same faith, to take to outside works, that is to say, in the presence of others. Hence, also, we read in a psalm, “Man goeth forth to his work;”876 and the Lord Himself saith, “Let your works shine before men.”877 But I am better pleased that the Truth Himself, like a good Shepherd, and therefore a good Teacher, hath in a certain measure reminded us how we ought to understand His words, “He shall go in and out, and find pasture,” when He added in the sequel, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” For He seems to me to have meant, That they may have life in coming in, and have it more abundantly at their departure. For no one can pass out by the door—that is, by Christ—to that eternal life which shall be open to the sight, unless by the same door—that is, by the same Christ—he has entered His church, which is His fold, to the temporal life, which is lived in faith. Therefore, He saith, “I am come that they may have life,” that is, faith, which worketh by love;878 by which faith they enter the fold that they may live, for the just liveth by faith:879 “and that they may have it more abundantly,” who, enduring unto the end, pass out by this same door, that is, by the faith of Christ; for as true believers they die, and will have life more abundantly when they come whither the Shepherd hath preceded them, where they shall die no more. Although, therefore, there is no want of pasture even here in the fold,—for we may understand the words “and shall find pasture” as referring to both, that is, both to their going in and their going out,—yet there only will they find the true pasture. where they shall be filled who hunger and thirst after righteousness,880—such pasture as was found by him to whom it was said, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”881 But how He Himself is the door, and Himself the Shepherd, so that He also may in a certain respect be understood as going in and out by 875 Eph. iii. 17. 876 Ps. civ. 23. 877 Matt. v. 16. 878 Gal. v. 6. 879 Rom. i. 17. 880 Matt. v. 6. 881 Luke xxiii. 43. Himself, and who is the porter, it would be too long to inquire to-day, and, according to the grace given us by Himself, to unfold in the way of dissertation.

1. The Lord Jesus is speaking to His sheep—to those already so, and to those yet to become such—who were then present; for in the place where they were, there were those who were already His sheep, as well as those who were afterwards to become so: and He likewise shows to those then present and those to come, both to them and to us, and to as many also after us as shall yet be His sheep, who it is that had been sent to them. All, therefore, hear the voice of their Shepherd saying, “I am the good Shepherd.” He would not add “good,” were there not bad shepherds. But the bad shepherds are those who are thieves and robbers, or certainly hirelings at the best. For we ought to examine into, to distinguish, and to know, all the characters whom He has here depicted. The Lord has already unfolded two points, which He had previously set forth in a kind of covert form: we already know that He is Himself the door, and we know that He is Himself the Shepherd. Who the thieves and robbers are, was made clear in yesterday’s lesson; and to-day we have heard of the hireling, as we have heard also of the wolf. Yesterday the porter was also introduced by name. Among the good, therefore, are the door, the doorkeeper, the shepherd, and the sheep: among the bad, the thieves and robbers, the hirelings, and the wolf.

2. We understand the Lord Christ as the door, and also as the Shepherd; but who is to be understood as the doorkeeper? For the former two, He has Himself explained: the doorkeeper He has left us to search out for ourselves. And what doth He say of the doorkeeper? “To him,” He saith, “the porter [doorkeeper]882 openeth.” To whom doth he open? To the Shepherd. What doth he open to the Shepherd? The door. And who is also the door? The Shepherd Himself. Now, if Christ the Lord had not Himself explained, had not Himself said, “I am the Shepherd,” and “I am the door,” would any of us have ventured to say that Christ is Himself both the Shepherd and the door? For had He said, “I am the Shepherd,” and had not said, “I am the door,” we should be setting ourselves to inquire what was the door, and perhaps, mistaken in our views, be still standing before the door. His grace and mercy have revealed to us the Shepherd, by His calling Himself so; have revealed to us also the door, when declared Himself such; but He hath left us to search out the doorkeeper for ourselves. Whom, then, are we to call the doorkeeper? Whomsoever we fix upon, we must take care not to think of him as greater than the door itself; for in men’s houses the doorkeeper is greater than the door. The doorkeeper is placed before the door, not the door before the doorkeeper; because the porter keepeth the door, not the door the porter. I dare not say that any one is greater than the door, for I have heard already what is the door: that is no longer unknown to me, I am not left to my own conjecture, and I have not got much room 882 Ostiarius. for mere human guess work: God hath said it, the Truth hath said it, and we cannot change what the Unchangeable hath uttered.

3. In respect, then, of the profound nature of this question, I shall tell you what I think: let each one make the choice that pleases him, but let him think of it reverently; as it is written, “Think of the Lord with goodness, and in simplicity of heart seek Him.”883 Perhaps we ought to understand the Lord Himself as the doorkeeper: for the shepherd and the door are in human respects as much different from each other as the doorkeeper and the door; and yet the Lord has called Himself both the Shepherd and the door. Why, then, may we not understand Him also as the doorkeeper? For if we look at His personal qualities,884 the Lord Christ is neither a shepherd, in the way we are accustomed to know and to see shepherds; nor is He a door, for no artisan made Him: but if, because of some point of similarity, He is both the door and the Shepherd, I venture to say, He is also a sheep. True, the sheep is under the shepherd; yet He is both the Shepherd and a sheep. Where is He the Shepherd? Look, here thou hast it; read the Gospel: “I am the good Shepherd.” Where is He a sheep? Ask the prophet: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.”885 Ask the friend of the bride- groom: “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.”886 Moreover, I am going to say something of a still more wonderful kind, in accordance with these points of similarity. For both the lamb, and the sheep, and the shepherd are friendly with one another, but from the lions as their foes the sheep are protected by their shepherds: and yet of Christ, who is both sheep and Shepherd, we have it said, “The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed.”887 All this, brethren, understand in connection with points of similarity, not with personal qualities. It is a common thing to see the shepherds sitting on a rock, and there guarding the cattle committed to their care. Surely the shepherd is better than the rock that he sits upon; and yet Christ is both the Shepherd and the rock. All this by way of comparison. But if thou askest me for His peculiar personal quality:888 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”889 If thou askest me for the personal quality peculiarly His own: The only Son, from everlasting to everlasting begotten of the Father, the equal of Him that begat, the Maker of all things, unchangeable with the Father, unchanged by the assuming of human form, man by incarnation, the Son of man, and the Son of God. All this that I have said is not figure, but reality.

1. Those of you who hear the word of our God, not only with willingness, but also with attention, doubtless remember our promise. Indeed the same gospel lesson has also been read to-day which was read last Lord’s day; because, having lingered over certain closely related topics, we could not discuss all that we owed to your powers of understanding. Ac- cordingly, what has been already said and discoursed about we do not inquire into to day, lest by continual repetitions we should be prevented from reaching what has still to be spoken. You know now in the Lord’s name who is the good Shepherd, and in what way good shepherds are His members, and therefore the Shepherd is one. You know who is the hireling we have to bear with; who the wolf, and the thieves, and the robbers we have to beware of; who are the sheep, and what is the door whereby both sheep and shepherd enter: how we are to understand the doorkeeper. You know also that every one who entereth not by the door is a thief and a robber, and cometh not but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. All these sayings have, as I think, been sufficiently handled. To-day we ought to tell you, as far as the Lord enables us (for Jesus Christ our Saviour hath Himself told us that He is both the Shepherd and the door, and that the good Shepherd entereth in by the door), how it is that He entereth in by Himself. For if no one is a good shepherd but he that entereth by the door, and He Himself is preeminently the good Shepherd, and also Himself the door, I can understand it only in this way, that He entereth in by Himself to His sheep, and calleth them to follow Him, and they, going in and out, find pasture, which is to say, eternal life.

2. I proceed, then, without more delay. When I seek to get into you, that is, into your heart, I preach Christ: were I preaching something else, I should be trying to climb up some other way. Christ, therefore, is my gate to you: by Christ I get entrance, not to your houses, but to your hearts. It is by Christ I enter: it is Christ in me that you have been willingly hearing. And why is it you have thus willingly hearkened to Christ in me? Because you are the sheep of Christ, purchased with the blood of Christ. You acknowledge your own price, which is not paid by me, but is preached by my instrumentality. He, and only He, was the buyer, who shed precious blood—the precious blood of Him who was without sin. Yet made He precious also the blood of His own, for whom He paid the price of blood: for had He not made the blood of His own precious, it would not have been said, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” 903 So also when He saith, “The good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep,” He is not the only one who has done such a deed; and yet if those who have done so are His members, He only Himself was the doer of it. For He was able to do so without them, but whence had they the power apart from Him, who Himself had said, 903 Ps. cxvi. 15. “Without me ye can do nothing”?904 But from the same source we can show what others also have done, for the apostle John himself, who preached the very gospel you have been hearing, has said in his epistle, “Just as Christ laid down His life for us, so ought we also to lay down our lives for the brethren.”905 “We ought,” he says: He made us debtors who first set the example. To the same effect it is written in a certain place, “If thou sittest down to sup at a ruler’s table, make wise observation of what is set before thee; and put to thy hand, knowing that it will be thy duty to make similar provision in turn.”906 You know what is meant by the ruler’s table: you there find the body and blood of Christ; let him who comes to such a table be ready with similar provision. And what is such similar provision? As He laid down His life for us, so ought we also, for the edification of others, and the maintenance of the faith,907 to lay down our lives for the brethren. To the same effect He said to Peter, whom He wished to make a good shepherd, not in Peter’s own person, but as a member of His body: “Peter, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.” This He did once, again, and a third time, to the disciple’s sorrow. And when the Lord had questioned him as often as He judged it needful, that he who had thrice denied might thrice confess Him, and had a third time given him the charge to feed His sheep, He said to him, “When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shall be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” And the evangelist has explained the Lord’s meaning: “But this spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify God.”908 “Feed my sheep” applies, then, to this, that thou shouldst lay down thy life for my sheep.

3. And now when He saith, “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father,” who can be ignorant of His meaning? For He knoweth the Father by Himself, and we by Him. That He hath knowledge by Himself, we know already: that we also have knowledge 904 Chap. xv. 5. 905 1 John iii. 16. 906 Prov. xxiii. 1, 2, according to the Septuagint, whose reading of verse 2 must have been somewhat different from that of the present Hebrew text, with which our English version pretty closely agrees: “And thou shalt put a knife to thy throat, if thou art a man of appetite” (or perhaps, “if thou hast control over thy appetite,” אִם־בַּעַל נֶפֶש אַתָּה ). So somewhat similarly the Vulgate, which makes the last clause, “if thou hast power over thy life.”—Tr. 907 This clause, “for the edification,” etc., is wanting in many of the mss. 908 Chap. xxi. 15–19. by Him, we have like wise learned, for this also we have learned of Him. For He Himself hath said: “No one hath seen God at any time; but the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.”909 And so by Him do we also get this knowledge, to whom He hath declared Him. In another place also He saith: “No one knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any one the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.”910 As He then knoweth the Father by Himself, and we know the Father by Him; so into the sheepfold He entereth by Himself, and we by Him. We were saying that by Christ we have a door of entrance to you; and why? Because we preach Christ. We preach Christ; and therefore we enter in by the door. But Christ preacheth Christ, for He preacheth Himself; and so the Shepherd entereth in by Himself. When the light shows the other things that are seen in the light, does it need some other means of being made visible itself? The light, then, exhibits both other things and itself. Whatever we understand, we understand with the intellect: and how, save by the intellect, do we understand the intellect itself? But does one in the same way with the bodily eye see both other things and [the eye] itself? For though men see with their eyes, yet their own eyes they see not. The eye of the flesh sees other things, itself it cannot [see]: but the intellect understands itself as well other things. In the same way as the intellect seeth itself, so also doth Christ preach Himself. If He preacheth Himself, and by preaching entereth into thee, He entereth into thee by Himself. And He is the door to the Father, for there is no way of approach to the Father but by Him. “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”911 Many things are expressed by a word: all that I have just said, I have said, of course, by means of words. If I were wishing to speak also of a word itself, how could I do so but by the use of the word? And thus both many things are expressed by a word, which are not the same as the word, and the word itself can only be expressed by means of the word. By the Lord’s help we have been copious in illustration. Remember, then, how the Lord Jesus Christ is both the door and the Shepherd: the door, in presenting Himself to view; the Shepherd, in entering in by Himself. And indeed, brethren, because He is the Shepherd, He hath given to His members to be so likewise. For both Peter, and Paul, and the other apostles were, as all good bishops are, shepherds. But none of us calleth himself the door. This—the way of entrance for the sheep—He has retained as exclusively belonging to Himself. In short, Paul discharged the office of a good shepherd when he preached Christ, because he entered by the door. But when the undisciplined sheep began to create schisms, and to set up other doors before them, not of entrance to their joint assembly, but for falling away into divisions, saying, some of them, “I am of Paul;” others, “I am of Cephas;” others, 909 Chap. i. 18. 910 Matt. xi. 27. 911 1 Tim. ii. 5. “I of Apollos;” others, “I of Christ:” terrified for those who said, “I am of Paul,”—as if calling out to the sheep, Wretched ones, whither are you going? I am not the door,—he said, “Was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?”912 But those who said, “I am of Christ,” had found the door.

4. But of the one sheepfold and of the one Shepherd, you are now indeed being constantly reminded; for we have commended much the one sheepfold, preaching unity, that all the sheep should enter by Christ, and none of them should follow Donatus. Nevertheless, for what particular reason this was said by the Lord, is sufficiently apparent. For He was speaking among the Jews, and had been specially sent to the Jews, not for the sake of that class who were bound up in their inhuman hatred and persistently abiding in darkness, but for the sake of some in the nation whom He calls His sheep: of whom He saith, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”913 He knew them even amid the crowd of His raging foes, and foresaw them in the peace of believing. What, then, does He mean by saying, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” but that He exhibited His bodily presence only to the people of Israel? He did not proceed Himself to the Gentiles, but sent: to the people of Israel He both sent and came in person, that those who proved despisers should receive the greater judgment, because favored also with the sight of His actual presence. The Lord Himself was there: there He chose a mother: there He wished to be conceived, to be born, to shed His blood: there are His footprints,914 now objects of ad- oration where last He stood, and whence He ascended to heaven: but to the Gentiles He only sent.

5. But perhaps some one thinks that, as He Himself came not to us, but sent, we have not heard His own voice, but only the voice of those whom He sent. Far from it: let such a thought be banished from your hearts; for He Himself was in those whom He sent. Listen to Paul himself whom He sent; for Paul was specially sent as an apostle to the Gentiles; and it is Paul who, terrifying them not with himself but with Him saith, “Do ye wish to receive a proof of Him who speaketh in me, that is, of Christ?”915 Listen also to the Lord Himself. “And other sheep I have,” that is, among the Gentiles, “which are not of this fold,” that is, of the people of Israel: “them also must I bring.” Therefore, even when it is by the instrumentality of His servants, it is He and not another that bringeth them. Listen further: “They 912 1 Cor. i. 12, 13. 913 Matt. xv. 24. 914 Of Christ’s footprints on Mount Olivet, impressed on the ground, there is mention made in the works of Jerome, in the book on “Hebrew places,” and in Bede, in the names of places in the Acts of the Apostles; as likewise in the sacred history of Sulpitius Severus, Book ii.—Migne. The text is somewhat uncertain, but indicates the existence of “holy places” in Augustin’s day, and certain acts of worship performed in their honor.—Tr. 915 2 Cor. xiii. 3. shall hear my voice.” See here also, it is He Himself who speaks by His servants, and it is His voice that is heard in those whom He sends. “That there may be one fold, and one shepherd.” Of these two flocks, as of two walls, is the corner-stone formed.916 And thus is He both door and the corner-stone: all by way of comparison, none of them literally.

6. For I have said so before, and earnestly pressed it on your notice, and those who comprehend it are wise, yea, those who are wise do comprehend it; and yet let those who are not yet intellectually enlightened, keep hold by faith of what they cannot as yet understand. Christ is many things metaphorically, which strictly speaking917 He is not. Metaphorically Christ is both a rock, and a door, and a corner-stone, and a shepherd, and a lamb, and a lion. How numerous are such similitudes, and as many more as would take too long to enumerate! But if you select the strict significations of things as you are accustomed to see them, then He is neither a rock, for He is not hard and senseless; nor a door, for no artisan made Him; nor a corner-stone, for He was not constructed by a builder; nor a shepherd, for He is no keeper of four-footed animals; nor a lion, as it ranks among the beasts of the forest; nor a lamb, as it belongs to the flock. All such, then, are by way of comparison. But what is He properly? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God God was the Word.” And what, as He appeared in human nature? “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us in us.”918

7. Hear also what follows. “Therefore doth my Father love me,” He saith, “because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.” What is this that He says? “Therefore doth my Father love me:” because I die, that I may rise again.919 For the “I” is uttered with special emphasis: “Because I lay down,” He saith, “I lay down my life,” “I lay down.” What is that “I lay down”? I lay it down. Let the Jews no longer boast: they might rage, but they could have no power: let them rage as they can; if I were unwilling to lay down my life, what would all their raging effect? By one answer of His they were prostrated in the dust: when they were asked, “Whom seek ye?” they said, “Jesus;” and on His saying to them, “I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground.”920 Those who thus fell to the ground at one word of Christ when about to die, what will they do at the sound of His voice when coming to judgment? “I, I,” I say, “lay down my life, that I may take it again.” Let not the Jews boast, as if they had prevailed; He Himself laid down His life. “I laid me down to sleep,” He says elsewhere. You know the psalm: “I laid me down and slept; and I awaked rose up, for 916 Eph. ii. 11–22. 917 Per proprietatum. 918 Chap. i. 1, 14. 919 Migne says that “there is, perhaps, in this passage something either superfluous or lacking.” But there does not seem any real cause for such a supposition.—Tr. 920 Chap. xviii. 4–6. the Lord sustaineth me.” What of that—“I lay down”? Because it was my pleasure, I did so. What does “I lay down” mean? I died. Was it not a lying down to sleep on His part, who, when He pleased, rose from the tomb as He would from a bed? But He loves to give glory to the Father, that He may stir us up to glorify our Creator. For in adding, “I arose, for the Lord sustaineth me;” think you there was here a kind of failing in His power, so that, while He had it in His own power to die, He had it not in His power to rise again? So, indeed, the words seem to imply when not more closely considered. “I lay down to sleep;” that is, I did so, because I pleased. “And I arose:” why? “Because the Lord sustaineth [will sustain] me.”921 What then? wouldst Thou not have power to rise of Thyself? If Thou hadst not the power, Thou wouldst not have said, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again.” But, as showing that not only did the Father raise the Son, but the Son also raised Himself, hear how, in another passage in the Gospel, He saith, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And the evangelist adds: “But this He spake of the temple of His body.”922 For only that which died was restored to life. The Word is not mortal, His soul is not mortal. If even thine dieth not, could the Lord’s be subject to death?

8. How can I know, thou wilt say, that mine dieth not? Slay it not thyself, and it cannot die. How, thou asketh, can I slay my soul? To say nothing meanwhile of other sins, “The mouth that lieth, slayeth the soul.”923 How, thou sayest, can I be sure that it dieth not? Listen to the Lord Himself giving security to His servant: “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” But what in the plainest terms does He say? “Fear Him who hath power to slay both soul and body in hell.”924 Here you have the fact that it dieth, and that it doth not die. What is its dying? What is dying to thy flesh? Dying, to thy flesh, is the losing of its life: dying to thy soul, is the losing of its life. The life of thy flesh is thy soul: the life of thy soul is thy God. As the flesh dies in losing the soul, which is its life, so the soul dieth in losing God, who is its life. Of a certainty, then, the soul is immortal. Manifestly immortal, for it liveth even when dead. For what the apostle said of the luxurious widow, may also be said of the soul if it has lost its God, “she is dead while she liveth.”925

1. As I have already charged you, beloved, you ought steadfastly to bear in mind that Saint John the evangelist would not have us be always nourished with milk, but fed with solid food. Still, whoever is hardly able as yet to partake of the solid food of God’s word, let him find nourishment in the milk of faith; and the word which he cannot understand, let him not hesitate to believe. For faith is the deserving: understanding, the reward. In the very labor of intent application the eye of our mind struggles938 to get rid of the foul films of human mists, and be cleared up to the word of God. Labor, then, will not be declined if love is present; for you know that he who loves his labor is insensible to its pain. For no labor is grievous to those who love it. If cupidity on the part of the avaricious endures so great toils, what in our case will not love endure?

2. Listen to the Gospel: “And it was at Jerusalem the Encoenia.”939 Encoenia was the festival of the dedication of the temple. For in Greek kainos means new; and whenever there was some new dedication, it was called Encoenia.940 And now this word is come into common use; if one puts on a new coat, he is said “encoeniare” (to renovate, or to hold an encoenia). For the Jews celebrated in a solemn manner the day on which the temple was dedicated; and it was the very feast day when the Lord spake what has just been read.

3. “It was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Then came the Jews round about Him, and said unto Him, How long dost thou keep our mind in suspense? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.” They were not desiring the truth, but preparing a calumny. “It was winter,” and they were chill; because they were slow to approach that divine fire. For to approach is to believe: he who believes, approaches; who denies, retires. The soul is not moved by the feet, but by the affections. They had become icy cold to the sweetness of loving Him, and they burned with the desire of doing Him an injury. They were far away, while there beside Him. It was not with them a nearer approach in believing, but the pressure of persecution. They sought to hear the Lord saying, I am Christ; and probably enough they only thought of the Christ in a human way. The prophets preached Christ; but the Godhead of Christ asserted in the prophets and in the gospel itself is not perceived even by heretics; and how much less by Jews, so long as the vail is upon their heart?941 In short, in a certain place, the Lord Jesus, knowing that their views of the Christ were cast in a human mould, 938 Desudat, struggles to sweating. 939 Encænia, ἐγκαίνια, from ἐν and καινός, new. 940 It was a feast, however, instituted by Judas Maccabæus, to commemorate his purification of the temple, after its profanation by Antiochus.—Tr. 941 2 Cor. iii. 15. not in the Divine, taking His stand on the human ground, and not on that where along with the assumption of humanity He also continued Divine, He said to them, “What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?” Following their own opinion, they replied, “Of David.” For so they had read, and this only they retained; because while they read of His divinity, they did not understand it. But the Lord, to pin them down to some inquiry touching the divinity of Him whose apparent weakness they despised, answered them: “How, then, doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand, till I put Thine enemies under Thy feet? If David, then, in spirit call Him Lord, how is He his son?”942 He did not deny, but questioned. Let no one think, on hearing this, that the Lord Jesus denied that He was the Son of David. Had Christ the Lord given any such denial, He would not have enlightened the blind who so addressed Him. For as He was passing by one day, two blind men, who were sitting by the wayside, cried out, “Have mercy upon us, thou Son of David.” And on hearing these words He had mercy on them. He stood still, healed, enlightened them; 943 for He owned the name. The Apostle Paul also says, “Who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;”944 and in his Epistle to Timothy, “Remember that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, [He that is] of the seed of David, according to my gospel.”945 For the Virgin Mary drew her origin, and hence our Lord also, from the seed of David.

4. The Jews made this inquiry of Christ, chiefly in order that, should He say, I am Christ, they might, in accordance with the only sense they attached to such a name, that He was of the seed of David, calumniate Him with aiming at the kingly power. There is more than this in His answer to them: they wished to calumniate Him with claiming to be the Son of David. He replied that He was the Son of God. And how? Listen: “Jesus answered them, I tell you, and ye believe not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me: but ye believe not; because ye are not of my sheep.” Ye have already learned above (in Lecture XLV.) who the sheep are: be ye sheep. They are sheep through believing, sheep in following the Shepherd, sheep in not despising their Redeemer, sheep in entering by the door, sheep in going out and finding pasture, sheep in the enjoyment of eternal life. What did He mean, then, in saying to them, “Ye are not of my sheep”? That He saw them predestined to everlasting destruction, not won to eternal life by the price of His own blood.

5. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life.” This is the pasture. If you recollect, He had said before, “And he shall go in and 942 Matt. xxii. 42–45. 943 Matt. xx. 30–34. 944 Rom. i. 3. 945 2 Tim. ii. 8. out, and find pasture.” We have entered by believing—we go out at death.946 But as we have entered by the door of faith, so, as believers, we quit the body; for it is in going out by that same door that we are able to find pasture. The good pasture is called eternal life; there no blade withereth—all is green and flourishing. There is a plant commonly said to be everliving; there only is it found to live. “I will give,” He says, “unto them,” unto my sheep, “eternal life.” Ye are on the search for calumnies, just because your only thoughts are of the life that is present.

6. “And they shall never perish:” you may hear the undertone, as if He had said to them, Ye shall perish for ever, because ye are not of my sheep. “No one shall pluck them out of my hand.” Give still greater heed to this: “That which my Father gave me is greater than all.”947 What can the wolf do? What can the thief and the robber? They destroy none but those predestined to destruction. But of those sheep of which the apostle says, “The Lord knoweth them that are His;”948 and “Whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate; and whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified;”949—there is none of such sheep as these that the wolf seizes, or the thief steals, or the robber slays. He, who knows what He gave for them, is sure of their number. And it is this that He says: “No one shall pluck them out of my hand;” and in reference also to the Father, “That which my Father gave me is greater than all.” What did the Father give to the Son that was greater than all? To be His 946 The pasture, and the going in and out, refer rather to Christ’s guidance and nourishment of His people in this present life.—Tr. 947 There is a considerable difference in these words, as rendered by Augustin, from that which is found in our English version: “My Father who gave them me is greater than all.” The latter is certainly the more intelligible and suitable to the context. But the variation of the mss. between the two readings, “ὅ…μεῖζον” and “ὅς…μείζων,” is somewhat remarkable. The far larger number are certainly in favor of the latter, as followed by our English Bibles, but the former is countenanced by some of the more important; while others which have ὅς have at the same time μεῖζον (neut.) and vice versa. Thus the Sinaitic reads ὅ (neut.), and μεῖζων (masc.); while the Alexandrian has ὅς (masc.), and μεῖζον (neut.). The Vulgate, and some of the other early versions, have Augustin’s reading; but the Peshito (Syriac), which is the earliest of them all, supports the other, its literal rendering being, “For my Father, who gave to me, than all greater [is] He.” Modern critics have generally adopted the masc. reading,—Griesbach, Bengel, and others, almost ignoring the other, and Stier dismissing it as wholly inadmissible; while Alford, in a very strange and unsatisfactory way, gives the neuter in his Greek text, and not a syllable of explanation in his notes. It seems to us that the transcriber had first let ὅ creep into the text, perhaps from the previous similar expression in chap. vi. 39; and then μεῖζον was made neuter by some other to agree with it. This is more likely than the reverse; and our English reading is every way more satisfactory than Augustin’s.—Tr. 948 2 Tim. ii. 19. 949 Rom. viii. 29, 30. own only-begotten Son. What, then, means “gave”? Was He to whom He gave previously existent, or gave He in the act of begetting? For if He previously existed to whom He gave the gift of Sonship, there was a time when He was, and was not the Son. Far be it from us to suppose that the Lord Christ ever was, and yet was not the Son. Of us such a thing may be said: there was a time when we were the sons of men, but were not the sons of God. For we are made the sons of God by grace, but He by nature, for such was He born. And yet not so, as that one may say, He did not exist till He was born; for He, who was coeternal with the Father, was never unborn. Let him who is wise understand: and whoever understands not, let him believe and be nourished, and he will come to understanding. The Word of God was always with the Father, and always the Word; and because the Word, therefore the Son. So then, always the Son, and always equal. For it is not by growth but by birth that He is equal, who was always born, the Son of the Father, God of God, coeternal of the Eternal. But the Father is not God of950 the Son: the Son is God of951 the Father; therefore in begetting the Son, the Father “gave” Him to be God, in begetting He gave Him to be coeternal with Himself, in begetting He gave Him to be His equal. This is that which is greater than all. How is the Son the life, and the possessor of life? What He has, He is: as for thee, thou art one thing, thou hast another. For example, thou hast wisdom, but art thou wisdom itself? In short, because thou thyself art not that which thou hast, shouldst thou lose what thou hast, thou returnest to the state of no longer having it: and sometimes thou re-acquirest, sometimes thou losest. As our eye has no light inherently in itself, it opens, and admits it; it shuts, and loses it. It is not thus that the Son of God is God—not thus that He is the Word of the Father; and not thus is He the Word, that passes away with the sound, but that which abides in its birth. In such a way hath He wisdom that He is Himself wisdom, and maketh men wise: and life, that He is Himself the life, and maketh others alive. This is that which is greater than all. The evangelist John himself looked to heaven and earth when wishing to speak of the Son of God; he looked, and rose above them all. He thought on the thousands of angelic armies above the heavens; he thought, and, like the eagle soaring beyond the clouds, his mind overpassed the whole creation: he rose beyond all that was great, and arrived at that which was greater than all; and said, “In the beginning was the Word.” But because He, of952 whom is the Word, is not of the Word, and the Word is of Him, whose Word He is; therefore He says, “That which the Father gave me,” namely, to be His Word, His onlybegotten Son, the brightness of His light, “is greater than all.” Therefore, “No one,” He says, “plucketh my sheep out of my hand. No one can pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”

1. Among all the miracles wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Lazarus holds a foremost place in preaching. But if we consider attentively who did it, our duty is to rejoice rather than to wonder. A man was raised up by Him who made man: for He is the only One of the Father, by whom, as you know, all things were made. And if all things were made by Him, what wonder is it that one was raised by Him, when so many are daily brought into the world by His power? It is a greater deed to create men than to raise them again from the dead. Yet He deigned both to create and to raise again; to create all, to resuscitate some. For though the Lord Jesus did many such acts, yet all of them are not recorded; just as this same St. John the evangelist himself testifies, that Christ the Lord both said and did many things that are not recorded;961 but such were chosen for record as seemed to suffice for the salvation of believers. Thou hast just heard that the Lord Jesus raised a dead man to life; and that is sufficient to let thee know that, were He so pleased, He might raise all the dead to life. And, indeed this very work has He reserved in His own hands till the end of the world. For while you have heard that by a great miracle He raised one from the tomb who had been dead four days, “the hour is coming,” as He Himself saith, “in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” He raised one who was putrid, and yet in that putrid carcase there was still the form of limbs; but at the last day He will by a word reconstitute ashes into human flesh. But it was needful then to do only some such deeds, that we, receiving them as tokens of His power, may put our trust in Him, and be preparing for that resurrection which shall be to life and not to judgment. So, indeed, He saith, “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”962

2. We have, however, read in the Gospel of three dead persons who were raised to life by the Lord, and, let us hope, to some good purpose. For surely the Lord’s deeds are not merely deeds, but signs. And if they are signs, besides their wonderful character, they have some real significance: and to find out this in regard to such deeds is a somewhat harder task than to read or hear of them. We were listening with wonder, as at the sight of some mighty miracle enacted before our eyes, in the reading of the Gospel, how Lazarus was restored to life. If we turn our thoughts to the still more wonderful works of Christ, every one that believeth riseth again: if we all consider, and understand that more horrifying kind of 961 Chap. xx. 30. 962 Chap. v. 28, 29. death, every one who sinneth dies.963 But every man is afraid of the death of the flesh; few, of the death of the soul. In regard to the death of the flesh, which must certainly come some time, all are on their guard against its approach: this is the source of all their labor. Man, destined to die, labors to avert his dying; and yet man, destined to live for ever, labors not to cease from sinning. And when he labors to avoid dying, he labors to no purpose, for its only result will be to put off death for a while, not to escape it; but if he refrain from sinning, his toil will cease, and he shall live for ever. Oh that we could arouse men, and be ourselves aroused along with them, to be as great lovers of the life that abideth, as men are of that which passeth away! What will a man not do who is placed under the peril of death? When the sword was overhanging their heads, men have given up every means of living they had in reserve. Who is there that has not made an immediate surrender of all, to escape being slain? And, after all, he has perhaps been slain. Who is there that, to save his life, has not been willing at once to lose his means of living, and prefer a life of beggary to a speedy death? Who has had it said to him, Be off to sea if you would escape with your life, and has delayed to do so? Who has had it said to him, Set to work if you would preserve your life, and has continued a sluggard? It is but little that God requires of us, that we may live for ever: and we neglect to obey Him. God says not to thee, Lose all you have, that you may live a little time oppressed with toil; but, Give to the poor of what you have, that you may live always exempt from labor. The lovers of this temporal life, which is theirs, neither when, nor as long as they wish, are our accusers; and we accuse not ourselves in turn, so sluggish are we, so lukewarm about obtaining eternal life, which will be ours if we wish it, and will be imperishable when we have it; but this death which we fear, notwithstanding all our reluctance, will yet be ours in possession.

3. If, then, the Lord in the greatness of His grace and mercy raiseth our souls to life, that we may not die for ever, we may well understand that those three dead persons whom He raised in the body, have some figurative significance of that resurrection of the soul which is effected by faith: He raised up the ruler of the synagogue’s daughter, while still lying in the house;964 He raised up the widow’s young son, while being carried outside the gates of the city;965 and He raised up Lazarus, when four days in the grave. Let each one give heed to his own soul: in sinning he dies: sin is the death of the soul. But sometimes sin is committed only in thought. Thou hast felt delight in what is evil, thou hast assented to its commission, thou hast sinned; that assent has slain thee: but the death is internal, because the evil thought 963 Another reading of this sentence may be: “If we reflect, it is by a more wonderful work of Christ that every one who believeth rises again to life: if we reflect all, and understand, it is by a more horrible death that every sinner dieth.” 964 Mark v. 41, 42. 965 Luke vii. 14, 15. had not yet ripened into action. The Lord intimated that He would raise such a soul to life, in raising that girl, who had not yet been carried forth to the burial, but was lying dead in the house, as if sin still lay concealed. But if thou hast not only harbored a feeling of delight in evil, but hast also done the evil thing, thou hast, so to speak, carried the dead outside the gate: thou art already without, and being carried to the tomb. Yet such an one also the Lord raised to life. and restored to his widowed mother. If thou hast sinned, repent, and the Lord will raise thee up, and restore thee to thy mother Church. The third example of death is Lazarus. A grievous kind of death it is, and is distinguished as a habit of wickedness. For it is one thing to fall into sin, another to form the habit of sinning. He who falls into sin, and straightway submits to correction, will be speedily restored to life; for he is not yet entangled in the habit, he is not yet laid in the tomb. But he who has become habituated to sin, is buried, and has it properly said of him, “he stinketh;” for his character, like some horrible smell, begins to be of the worst repute. Such are all who are habituated to crime, abandoned in morals. Thou sayest to such an one, Do not so. But when wilt thou be listened to by one on whom the earth is thus heaped, who is breeding corruption, and pressed down with the weight of habit? And yet the power of Christ was not unequal to the task of restoring such an one to life. We know, we have seen, we see every day men changing the very worst of habits, and adopting a better manner of life than that of those who blamed them. Thou detestedst such a man: look at the sister of Lazarus herself (if, indeed, it was she who anointed the Lord’s feet with ointment, and wiped with her hair what she had washed with her tears), who had a better resurrection than her brother; she was delivered from the mighty burden of a sinful character. For she was a notorious sinner; and had it said of her, “Her many sins are forgiven her, for she has loved much.”966 We see many such, we know many: let none despair, but let none presume in himself. Both the one and the other are sinful. Let thine unwillingness to despair take such a turn as to lead thee to make choice of Him in whom alone thou mayest well presume.

4. So then the Lord also raised Lazarus to life. You have heard what type of character he represents; in other words, what is meant by the resurrection of Lazarus. Let us now, therefore, read over the passage; and as there is much in this lesson clear already, we shall not go into any detailed exposition, so as to take up more thoroughly the necessary points. 966 Luke vii. 37–47. Augustin is mistaken here, although his error has been followed by many ancient writers, and some in more recent times. The time, place, and circumstances make it impossible for the incident here referred to, to be the same as that which took place in Bethany immediately before our Lord’s crucifixion. On that last occasion only was it Lazarus’ sister, Mary, who anointed Jesus. Luke here speaks only of a woman that was a sinner, and there is little evidence to connect her with any of the other Scripture women, even with Mary of Magdala, as is often done, and who is first mentioned by Luke in a different connection in the following chapter (viii. 2).—Tr. “Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and Martha, his sisters.” In the previous lesson you remember that the Lord escaped from the hands of those who sought to stone Him, and went away beyond Jordan, where John baptized.967 When the Lord therefore had taken up His abode there, Lazarus fell sick in Bethany, which was a town lying close to Jerusalem.

5. “But Mary was she who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore his sisters sent unto Him, saying.” We now understand whither it was they sent, namely, where the Lord was; for He was away, as you know, beyond the Jordan. They sent messengers to the Lord to tell Him that their brother was ill. He delayed to heal, that He might be able to raise to life. But what was the message sent by his sisters? “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.” They did not say, Come; for the intimation was all that was needed for one who loved. They did not venture to say, Come and heal him: they ventured not to say, Command there, and it shall be done here. And why not so with them, if on these very grounds the centurion’s faith was commended? For he said, “I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” 968 No such words said these women, but only, “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.” It is enough that Thou knowest; for Thou art not one that loveth and forsaketh. But says some one, How could a sinner be represented by Lazarus, and be so loved by the Lord? Let him listen to Him, when He says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”969 For had not God loved sinners, He would not have come down from heaven to earth.

6. “But when Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified.” Such a glorifying of Himself did not add to His dignity, but benefited us. Hence He says, “is not unto death,” because even that death itself was not unto death, but rather unto the working of a miracle whereby men might be led to faith in Christ, and so escape the real death. And mark how the Lord, as it were indirectly, called Himself God, for the sake of some who deny that the Son is God. For there are heretics who make such a denial, that the Son of God is God. Let them hearken here: “This sickness,” He says, “is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” For what glory? For the glory of what God? Hear what follows: “That the Son of God may be glorified.” “This sickness,” therefore, He says, “is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God maybe glorified thereby.” By what? By that sickness.

7. “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister Mary, and Lazarus.” The one sick, the others sad, all of them beloved: but He who loved them was both the Saviour of the sick, nay more, 967 Chap. x. 39, 40. 968 Matt. viii. 969 Matt. ix. 13. the Raiser of the dead and the Comforter of the sad. “When He heard therefore that he was sick, He abode then two days still in the same place.” They sent Him word: He abode where He was: and the time ran on till four days were completed. And not in vain, were it only that perhaps, nay that certainly, even the very number of days has some sacramental significance. “Then after that He saith again to His disciples, Let us go into Judea:” where He had been all but stoned, and from which He had apparently departed for the very purpose to escape being stoned. For as man He departed; but returned as if in forgetfulness of all infirmity, to show His power. “Let us go,” He said, “into Judea.”

8. And now see how the disciples were terrified at His words. “The disciples say unto Him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? “What means such an answer? They said to Him, “The Jews of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again” to be stoned? And the Lord, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? if any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world: but if he walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.” He spoke indeed of the day, but to our understanding as if it were still the night. Let us call upon the Day to chase away the night, and illuminate our hearts with the light. For what did the Lord mean? As far as I can judge, and as the height and depth of His meaning breaks into light, He wished to argue down their doubting and unbelief. For they wished by their counsel to keep the Lord from death, who had come to die, to save themselves from death. In a similar way also, in another passage, St. Peter, who loved the Lord, but did not yet fully understand the reason of His coming, was afraid of His dying, and so displeased the Life, to wit, the Lord Himself; for when He was intimating to the disciples what He was about to suffer at Jerusalem at the hands of the Jews, Peter made reply among the rest, and said, “Far be it from Thee, Lord; pity Thyself: this shall not be unto Thee.” And at once the Lord replied, “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” And yet a little before, in confessing the Son of God, he had merited commendation: for he heard the words, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.”970 To whom He had said, “Blessed art thou,” He now says, “Get thee behind me, Satan;” because it was not of himself that he was blessed. But of what then? “For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” See, this is how thou art blessed, not from anything that is thine own, but from that which is mine. Not that I am the Father, but that all things which the Father hath are mine. 971 But if his blessedness came from the Lord’s own working, from whose working came he to be Satan? He there tells us: for He assigned the reason of such blessedness, when He said, “Flesh 970 Matt. xvi. 16–23. 971 Chap. xvi. 15. and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven:” that is the cause of thy blessedness. But that I said, “Get thee behind me, Satan, hear also its cause. For thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Let no one then flatter himself: in that which is natural to himself he is Satan, in that which is of God he is blessed. For all that is of his own, whence comes it, but from his sin? Put away the sin, which is thine own. Righteousness, He saith, belongeth unto me. For what hast thou that thou didst not receive?972 Accordingly, when men wished to give counsel to God, disciples to their Master, servants to their Lord, patients to their Physician, He reproved them by saying, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not.” Follow me, if ye would not stumble: give not counsel to me, from whom you ought to receive it. To what, then, refer the words, “Are there not twelve hours in the day”? Just that to point Himself out as the day, He made choice of twelve disciples. If I am the day, He says, and you the hours, is it for the hours to give counsel to the day? The day is followed by the hours, not the hours by the day. If these, then, were the hours, what in such a reckoning was Judas? Was he also among the twelve hours? If he was an hour, he had light; and if he had light, how was the Day betrayed by him to death? But the Lord, in so speaking, foresaw, not Judas himself, but his successor. For Judas, when he fell, was succeeded by Matthias, and the duodenary number preserved.973 It was not, then, without a purpose that the Lord made choice of twelve disciples, but to indicate that He Himself is the spiritual Day. Let the hours then attend upon the Day, let them preach the Day, be made known and illuminated by the Day, and by the preaching of the hours may the world believe in the Day. And so in a summary way it was just this that He said: Follow me, if ye would not stumble.

9. “And after that He saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.” It was true what He said. To his sisters he was dead, to the Lord he was asleep. He was dead to men, who could not raise him again; but the Lord aroused him with as great ease from the tomb as one arouseth a sleeper from his bed. Hence it was in reference to His own power that He spoke of him as sleeping: for others also, who are dead, are frequently spoken of in Scripture as sleeping; as when the apostle says, “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope.”974 Therefore he also spoke of them as sleeping, because foretelling their resurrection. And so, all the dead are sleeping, both good and bad. But just as, in the case of those who sleep and waken day by day, there is a great difference as to what they severally see in their sleep: some experience pleasant dreams; others, dreams so frightful that the waking are afraid to fall asleep for fear of their recurrence: so every individual sleeps 972 1 Cor. iv. 7. 973 Acts i. 26. 974 1 Thess. iv. 13. and wakens in circumstances peculiar to himself. And there is a difference as to the kind of custody one may be placed in, who is afterwards to be taken before the judge. For the kind of custody in which men are placed depends on the merits of the case: some are required to be guarded by lictors, an office humane and mild, and becoming a citizen; others are given up to subordinates;975 some, again, are sent to prison: and in the prison itself all are not thrust together into its lowest dungeons, but dealt with in proportion to the merits and superior gravity of the charges. As, then, there are different kinds of custody among those engaged in official life, so there are different kinds of custody for the dead, and differing merits in those who rise again. The beggar was taken into custody, so was the rich man: but the one into Abraham’s bosom; the other, where he thirsted, and found not a drop of water.976

10. Therefore, to make this the occasion of instructing your Charity, all souls have, when they quit this world, their different receptions. The good have joy; the evil, torments. But when the resurrection takes place, both the joy of the good will be fuller and the torments of the wicked heavier, when they shall be tormented in the body. The holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and good believers, have been received into peace; but all of them have still in the end to receive the fulfillment of the divine promises; for they have been promised also the resurrection of the flesh, the destruction of death, and eternal life with the angels. This we have all to receive together; for the rest, which is given immediately after death, every one, if worthy of it, receives when he dies. The patriarchs first received it—think only from what they rest; the prophets afterwards; more recently the apostles; still more lately the holy martyrs, and day by day the good and faithful. Thus some have now been in that rest for long, some not so long; others for fewer years, and others whose entrance therein is still less than recent. But when they shall wake from this sleep, they shall all together receive the fulfillment of the promise.

11. “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said His disciples”—according to their understanding they replied—“Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.” For the sleep of the sick is usually a sign of returning health. “Howbeit Jesus spake of his death, but they thought that He spake of the taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly,”—for He said somewhat obscurely, “He sleepeth;”—therefore He said 975 Optionibus, assistants, underlings. In the mss., it is written, but incorrectly, optionibus; for Varro, Isidorus, and others think the optiones were so called ab optando, as being doubtless chosen as assistants to the decuriones and military adjutants. They were also attached to various offices: and hence there were artisan optiones, and those belonging to official or prison life, in which last signification they are used here; as also in Ambrose’s works (Commentary on the Ephesians, chap. 4) in these words: “Nor did Paul and Silas delay to baptize the jailor (optionem carceris).” 976 Luke xvi. 22–24. plainly, “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.” I even know that he is dead, and I was not there: for he had been reported not as dead, but sick. But what could remain hid from Him who had created it, and into whose hands the soul of the dying man had departed? This is why He said, “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe;” that they might now begin to wonder that the Lord could assert his death, which He had neither seen nor heard of. For here we ought specially to bear in mind that as yet the disciples themselves, who already believed in Him, had their faith built up by miracles: not that a faith, utterly wanting till then, might begin to exist; but that what had previously come into being might be increased; although He made use of such an expression as if only then they would begin to believe. For He said not, “I am glad for your sakes,” that your faith may be increased or confirmed; but, “that ye may believe;” which is to be understood as meaning, that your faith may be fuller and more vigorous.

12. “Nevertheless, let us go unto him. Then said Thomas, who is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with Him. Therefore Jesus came, and found that he had lain in the grave four days already.” Much might be said of the four days, according to the wont of the obscure passages of Scripture, which bear as many senses as there is diversity of those who understand them. Let us express also our opinion of what is meant by one four days dead. For as in the former case of the blind man we understand in a way the human race, so in the case of this dead man many perhaps are also to be understood; for one thing may be signified by different figures. When a man is born, he is born already in a state of death; for he inherits sin from Adam. Hence the apostle says: “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so that passed upon all men, wherein all have sinned.” 977 Here you have one day of death because man inherits it from the seed stock of death. Thereafter he grows, and begins to approach the years of reason that he may know the law of nature, which every one has had implanted in his heart: What thou wouldst not have done to thyself, do not to another. Is this learned from the pages of a book, and not in a measure legible in our very nature? Hast thou any desire to be robbed? Certainly not. See here, then, the law in thy heart: What thou art unwilling to suffer, be unwilling to do. This law also is transgressed by men; and here, then, we have the second day of death. The law was also divinely given through Moses, the servant of God; and therein it is said, “Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not bear false witness; honor thy father and mother; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”978 Here you have the written law, and it also is despised: this is the third day of death. What remains? The gospel also comes, the kingdom of heaven is 977 Rom. v. 12. 978 Ex. xx. 12–17. preached, Christ is everywhere published; He threatens hell, He promises eternal life; and that also is despised. Men transgress the gospel; and this is the fourth day of death. Now he deservedly stinketh. But is mercy to be denied to such? God forbid; for to raise such also from the dead, the Lord thinks it not unfitting to come.

13. “And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him; but Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.” She did not say, But even now I ask Thee to raise my brother to life again. For how could she know if such a resurrection would be of benefit to her brother? She only said, I know that Thou canst, and whatsoever Thou art pleased, Thou doest: for Thy doing it is dependent on Thine own judgment, not on my presumption. “But even now I know that, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.”

14. “Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.” This was ambiguous. For He said not, Even now I will raise thy brother; but, “Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day.” Of that resurrection I am sure, but uncertain about this. “Jesus saith unto her, I am the resurrection.” Thou sayest, My brother shall rise again at the last day: true; but by Him, through whom he shall rise then, can he rise even now, for “I,” He says, “am the resurrection and the life.” Give ear, brethren, give ear to what He says. Certainly the universal expectation of the bystanders was that Lazarus, one who had been dead four days,979 would live again; let us hear, and rise again. How many are there in this audience who are crushed down under the weighty mass of some sinful habit! Perhaps some are hearing me to whom it may be said, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;”980 and they say, We cannot. Some others, it may be, are hearing me, who are unclean, and stained with lusts and crimes, and to whom it is said, Refrain from such conduct, that ye perish not; and they reply, We cannot give up our habits. O Lord, raise them again. “I am,” He says, “the resurrection and the life.” The resurrection because the life.

15. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” What meaneth this? “He that believeth in me, though he were dead,” just as Lazarus is dead, “yet shall he live;” for He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Such was the answer He gave the Jews concerning their fathers, long ago dead, that is, concerning Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for 979 That is (Augustin here would suggest the emblem) of one who was lying under the fourth and most terrible form of spiritual death referred to before.—Tr. 980 Eph. v. 18. all live unto Him.”981 Believe then, and though thou wert dead, yet shalt thou live: but if thou believest not, even while thou livest thou art dead. Let us prove this likewise, that if thou believest not, though thou livest thou art dead. To one who was delaying to follow Him, and saying, “Let me first go and bury my father,” the Lord said, “Let the dead bury their dead; but come thou and follow me.”982 There was there a dead man requiring to be buried, there were there also dead men to bury the dead: the one was dead in the flesh, the others in soul. And how comes death on the soul? When faith is wanting. How comes death on the body? When the soul is wanting. Therefore thy soul’s soul is faith. “He that believeth in me,” says Christ, though he were dead in the flesh, yet shall he live in the spirit; till the flesh also rise again, never more to die. This is “he that believeth in me,” though he die, “yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth” in the flesh, “and believeth in me,” though he shall die in time on account of the death of the flesh, “shall never die,” because of the life of the spirit, and the immortality of the resurrection. Such is the meaning of the words, “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto Him, Yea, Lord, I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who hast come into the world.” When I believed this, I believed that Thou art the resurrection, that Thou art the life: I believed that he that believeth in Thee, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Thee, shall never die.

16. “And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister silently, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.” It is worthy of notice the way in which the whispering of her voice was denominated silence. For how could she be silent, when she said, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee”? It is also to be noticed why it is that the evangelist has not said where, or when, or how the Lord called for Mary; namely, that in order to preserve the brevity of the narrative, it may rather be understood from the words of Martha.

17. “As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto Him. For Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was still in that place where Martha met Him. The Jews, then, who were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily, and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave, to weep there.” What cause had the evangelist to tell us this? To show us what it was that occasioned the numerous concourse of people to be there when Lazarus was raised to life. For the Jews, thinking that her reason for hastening away was to seek in weeping the solace of her grief, followed her; that the great miracle of one rising again who had been four days dead, might have the presence of many witnesses.

1. Yesterday’s lesson in the holy Gospel, on which we spake as the Lord enabled us, is followed by to-day’s, on which we purpose to speak in the same spirit of dependence. Some passages in the Scriptures are so clear as to require a hearer rather than an expounder: over such we need not tarry, that we may have sufficient time for those which necessarily demand a fuller consideration.

2. “And the Jews’ passover was nigh at hand.” The Jews wished to have that feast-day crimsoned with the blood of the Lord. On it that Lamb was slain, who hath consecrated it as a feast-day for us by His own blood. There was a plot among the Jews about slaying Jesus: and He, who had come from heaven to suffer, wished to draw near to the place of His suffering, because the hour of His passion was at hand. Therefore “many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to sanctify themselves.” The Jews did so in accordance with the command of the Lord delivered by holy Moses in the law, that on the feast-day of the passover all should assemble from every part of the land, and be sanctified in celebrating the services of the day. But that celebration was a shadow of the future. And why a shadow? It was a prophetic intimation of the Christ to come, a prophecy of Him who on that day was to suffer for us: that so the shadow might vanish and the light come; that the sign might pass away, and the truth be retained. The Jews therefore held the passover in a shadowy form, but we in the light. For what need was there that the Lord should command them to slay a sheep on the very day of the feast, save only because of Him it was prophesied, “He is led as a sheep to the slaughter”?1007 The door-posts of the Jews were sealed with the blood of the slaughtered animal: with the blood of Christ are our foreheads sealed. And that sealing—for it had a real significance—was said to keep away the destroyer from the houses that were sealed:1008 Christ’s seal drives away the destroyer from us, if we receive the Saviour into our hearts. But why have I said this? Because many have their doorposts sealed while there is no inmate abiding within: they find it easy to have Christ’s seal in the forehead, and yet at heart refuse admission to His word. Therefore, brethren, I have said, and I repeat it, Christ’s seal driveth from us the destroyer, if only we have Christ as an inmate of our hearts. I have stated these things, lest any one’s thoughts should be turning on the meaning of these festivals of the Jews. The Lord therefore came as it were to the victim’s place, that the true passover might be ours, when we celebrated His passion as the real offering of the lamb.

1. After our Lord’s raising of one to life, who had been four days dead, to the utter amazement of the Jews, some of whom believed on seeing it, and others perished in their envy, because of that sweet savor which is unto life to some, and to others unto death;1027 after He had sat down to meat with Lazarus—the one who had been dead and raised to life—reclining also at table, and after the pouring on His feet of the ointment which had filled the house with its odor; and after the Jews also had shown their own spiritual abandonment in conceiving the useless cruelty and the monstrously foolish and insane guilt of slaying Lazarus;—of all which we have spoken as we could, by the grace of the Lord, in previous discourses: let your Charity now notice how abundant before our Lord’s passion was the fruit that appeared of His preaching, and how large was the flock of lost sheep of the house of Israel which had heard the Shepherd’s voice.

2. For the Gospel, the reading of which you have just been listening to, says: “On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went forth to meet Him, and cried, Hosanna: blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord as the King of Israel.” The branches of palm trees are laudatory emblems, significant of victory, because the Lord was about to overcome death by dying, and by the trophy of His cross to triumph over the devil, the prince of death. The exclamation used by the worshipping1028 people is Hosanna, indicating, as some who know the Hebrew language affirm, rather a state of mind than having any positive significance;1029 just as in our own tongue1030 we have what are called interjections, as when in our grief we say, Alas! or in our joy, Ha! or in our admiration, O how fine! where O! expresses only the feeling of the admirer. Of the same class must we believe this word to be, as it has failed to find an interpretation both in Greek and Latin, like that other, “Who- 1027 2 Cor. ii. 15. 1028 Obsecrantis, literally suppliant, which is scarcely suitable to the context. 1029 The “some” here referred to by Augustin could scarcely have had a very extensive knowledge of the Hebrew language, as the word Hosanna, though left untranslated, as a well-known exclamation of the Jews in their religious services, is part of the same quotation from Psalm cxviii. (see vers. 25, 26) with the words that follow in the text. The sacred writers gave the nearest equivalent in Greek letters (῾ωσαννά, Hosanna) of the Hebrew הֹושיִׁעה נָּא Save now!—Tr. 1030 In text, in lingua latina. soever shall say to his brother, Raca.”1031 For this also is allowed to be an interjection, expressive of angry feelings.

3. But when it is said, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, as the King of Israel,” by “in the name of the Lord” we are rather to understand “in the name of God the Father,” although it might also be understood as in His own name, inasmuch as He is also Himself the Lord. As we find Scripture also saying in another place, “The Lord rained upon Sodom fire from the Lord.”1032 But His own words are a better guide to our understanding, when He saith, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: another will come in his own name, and him ye will receive.”1033 For the true teacher of humility is Christ, who humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.1034 But He does not lose His divinity in teaching us humility; in the one He is the Father’s equal, in the other He is assimilated to us. By that which made Him the equal of the Father, He called us into existence; and by that in which He is like unto us, He redeemed us from ruin.

4. These, then, were the words of praise addressed to Jesus by the multitude, “Hosanna: blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.” What a cross of mental suffering must the Jewish rulers have endured when they heard so great a multitude proclaiming Christ as their King! But what honor was it to the Lord to be King of Israel? What great thing was it to the King of eternity to become the King of men? For Christ’s kingship over Israel was not for the purpose of exacting tribute, of putting swords into His soldiers’ hands, of subduing His enemies by open warfare; but He was King of Israel in exercising kingly authority over their inward natures, in consulting for their eternal interests, in bringing into His heavenly kingdom those whose faith, and hope, and love were centred in Himself. Accordingly, for the Son of God, the Father’s equal, the Word by whom all things were made, in His good pleasure to be King of Israel, was an act of condescension and not of promotion; a token of compassion, and not any increase of power. For He who was called on earth the King of the Jews, is in the heavens the Lord of angels.

5. “And Jesus, when He had found a young ass, sat thereon.” Here the account is briefly given: for how it all happened may be found at full length in the other evangelists.1035 But 1031 Raca (Syriac רָקאָ , Chaldee רֵיקָא , Hebrew רֵיק , empty) was an insulting epithet of common use from an early period among the Babylonians, and in our Lord’s day among the inhabitants of Syria and Palestine. It exactly answers to our idiot, or numskull, and is of frequent occurrence afterwards in the same sense in rabbinical writings.—Tr. 1032 Gen. xix. 24. 1033 Chap. v. 43. 1034 Phil. ii. 8. 1035 Matt. xxi. 1–16; Mark xi. 1–11; Luke xix. 29–48. there is appended to the circumstance itself a testimony from the prophets, to make it evident that He in whom was fulfilled all they read in Scripture, was entirely misunderstood by the evil-minded rulers of the Jews. Jesus, then, “found a young ass, and sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Zion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt.” Among that people, then, was the daughter of Zion to be found; for Zion is the same as Jerusalem. Among that very people, I say, reprobate and blind as they were, was the daughter of Zion, to whom it was said, “Fear not, daughter of Zion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt.” This daughter of Zion, who was thus divinely addressed, was amongst those sheep that were hearing the Shepherd’s voice, and in that multitude which was celebrating the Lord’s coming with such religious zeal, and accompanying Him in such warlike array. To her was it said, “Fear not:” acknowledge Him whom thou art now extolling, and give not way to fear when He comes to suffering; for by the shedding of His blood is thy guilt to be blotted out, and thy life restored. But by the ass’s colt, on which no man had ever sat (for so it is found recorded in the other evangelists), we are to understand the Gentile nations which had not received the law of the Lord; by the ass, on the other hand (for both animals were brought to the Lord), that people of His which came of the nation of Israel, and was already so far subdued as to recognize its Master’s crib.

6. “These things understood not His disciples at the first; but when Jesus was glorified,” that is, when He had manifested the power of His resurrection, “then remembered they that these things were written of Him, and they had done these things unto Him,” that is, they did nothing else but what had been written concerning Him. In short, mentally comparing with the contents of Scripture what was accomplished both prior to and in the course of our Lord’s passion, they found this also therein, that it was in accordance with the utterance of the prophets that He sat on an ass’s colt.

7. “The people, therefore, that was with Him when He called Lazarus out of his tomb, and raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the crowd also met Him, for that they heard that He had done this miracle. The Pharisees, therefore, said among themselves: Perceive ye that we prevail nothing? Behold, the whole world is gone after Him.” Mob set mob in motion.1036 “But why art thou, blinded mob that thou art, filled with envy because the world has gone after its Maker?”

8. “And there were certain Gentiles among them that had come up to worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip, who was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.” Let us hearken to the Lord’s reply. See how the Jews wish to kill Him, the Gentiles to see Him; and yet those, too, were of the Jews who cried, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.” Here, then, were they of the circumcision 1036 Turba turbavit turbam. and they of the uncircumcision, like two house walls running from different directions and meeting together with the kiss of peace, in the one faith of Christ. Let us listen, then, to the voice of the Cornerstone: “And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified.” Perhaps some one supposes here that He spake of Himself as glorified, because the Gentiles wished to see Him. Such is not the case. But He saw the Gentiles themselves in all nations coming to the faith after His own passion and resurrection, because, as the apostle says, “Blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should be come in.”1037 Taking occasion, therefore, from those Gentiles who desired to see Him, He announces the future fullness of the Gentile nations, and promises the near approach of the hour when He should be glorified Himself, and when, on its consummation in heaven, the Gentile nations should be brought to the faith. To this it is that the prediction pointed, “Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and Thy glory above all the earth.”1038 Such is the fullness of the Gentiles, of which the apostle saith, “Blindness in part is happened to Israel, till the fullness of the Gentiles come in.”

9. But the height of His glorification had to be preceded by the depth of His passion. Accordingly, He went on to add, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” But He spake of Himself. He Himself was the grain that had to die, and be multiplied; to suffer death through the unbelief of the Jews, and to be multiplied in the faith of many nations.

10. And now, by way of exhortation to follow in the path of His own passion, He adds, “He that loveth his life shall lose it,” which may be understood in two ways: “He that loveth shall lose,” that is, If thou lovest, be ready to lose; if thou wouldst possess life in Christ, be not afraid of death for Christ. Or otherwise, “He that loveth his life shall lose it.” Do not love for fear of losing; love it not here, lest thou lose it in eternity. But what I have said last seems better to correspond with the meaning of the Gospel, for there follow the words, “And he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” So that when it is said in the previous clause, “He that loveth,” there is to be understood in this world, he it is that shall lose it. “But he that hateth,” that is, in this world, is he that shall keep it unto life eternal. Surely a profound and strange declaration as to the measure of a man’s love for his own life that leads to its destruction, and of his hatred to it that secures its preservation! If in a sinful way thou lovest it, then dost thou really hate it; if in a way accordant with what is good thou hast hated it, then hast thou really loved it. Happy they who have so hated their life while keeping it, that their love shall not cause them to lose it. But beware of harboring the notion that thou mayest court self-destruction by any such understanding of thy duty to hate thy life in this world. For on such grounds it is that certain wrong-minded and per- 1037 Rom. xi. 25. 1038 Ps. cviii. 5. verted people, who, with regard to themselves, are murderers of a specially cruel and impious character, commit themselves to the flames, suffocate themselves in water, dash themselves against a precipice, and perish. This was no teaching of Christ’s, who, on the other hand, met the devil’s suggestion of a precipice with the answer, “Get thee behind me, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” 1039 To Peter also He said, signifying by what death he should glorify God, “When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not;”1040—where He made it sufficiently plain that it is not by himself but by another that one must be slain who follows in the footsteps of Christ. And so, when one’s case has reached the crisis that this condition is placed before him, either that he must act contrary to the divine commandment or quit this life, and that a man is compelled to choose one or other of the two by the persecutor who is threatening him with death, in such circumstances let him prefer dying in the love of God to living under His anger, in such circumstances let him hate his life in this world that he may keep it unto life eternal.

11. “If any man serve me, let him follow me.” What is that, “let him follow me,” but just, let him imitate me? “Because Christ suffered for us,” says the Apostle Peter, “leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.”1041 Here you have the meaning of the words, “If any man serve me, let him follow me.” But with what result? what wages? what reward? “And where I am,” He says, “there shall also my servant be.” Let Him be freely loved, that so the reward of the service done Him may be to be with Him. For where will one be well apart from Him, or when will one come to feel himself in an evil case in company with Him? Hear it still more plainly: “If any man serve me, him will my Father honor.” And what will be the honor but to be with His Son? For of what He said before, “Where I am, there shall also my servant be,” we may understand Him as giving the explanation, when He says here, “him will my Father honor.” For what greater honor can await an adopted son than to be with the Only-begotten; not, indeed, as raised to the level of His Godhead, but made a partaker of His eternity?

12. But it becomes us rather to inquire what is to be understood by this serving of Christ to which there is attached so great a reward. For if we have taken up the idea that the serving of Christ is the preparation of what is needful for the body, or the cooking and serving up of food, or the mixing of drink and handing the cup to one at the supper table; this, indeed, was done to Him by those who had the privilege of His bodily presence, as in the case of Martha and Mary, when Lazarus also was one of those who sat at the table. But in that sort 1039 Matt. iv. 7. 1040 Chap. xxi. 18, 19. 1041 1 Pet. ii. 21. of way Christ was served also by the reprobate Judas; for it was he also who had the money bag; and although he had the exceeding wickedness to steal of its contents, yet it was he also who provided what was needful for the meal.1042 And so also, when our Lord said to him, “What thou doest, do quickly,” there were some who thought that He only gave him orders to make some needful preparations for the feast-day, or to give something to the poor.1043 In no sense, therefore, was it of this class of servants that the Lord said, “Where I am, there shall also my servant be,” and “If any man serve me, him will my Father honor;” for we see that Judas, who served in this way, became an object of reprobation rather than of honor. Why, then, go elsewhere to find out what this serving of Christ implies, and not rather see its disclosure in the words themselves? for when He said, “If any man serve me, let him follow me,” He wished it to be understood just as if He had said, If any man doth not follow me, he serveth me not. And those, therefore, are the servants of Jesus Christ, who seek not their own things, but the things that are Jesus Christ’s.1044 For “let him follow me” is just this: Let him walk in my ways, and not in his own; as it is written elsewhere, “He that saith he abideth in Christ, ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.”1045 For he ought, if supplying food to the hungry, to do it in the way of mercy and not of boasting, seeking therein nothing else but the doing of good, and not letting his left hand know what his right hand doeth;1046 in other words, that all thought of self-seeking should be utterly estranged from a work of charity. He that serveth in this way serveth Christ, and will have it rightly said to him, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of those who are mine, ye did it unto me.”1047 And thus doing not only those acts of mercy that pertain to the body, but every good work, for the sake of Christ (for then will all be good, because “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”1048), he is Christ’s servant even to that work of special love, which is to lay down his life for the brethren, for that were to lay it down also for Christ. For this also will He say hereafter in behalf of His members: Inasmuch as ye did it for these, ye have done it for me. And certainly it was in reference to such a work that He was also pleased to make and to style Himself a servant, when He says, “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto served, but to minister serve, and to lay 1042 Chap. xii. 2–6. There is no ground in these verses for Augustin’s notion that the expense of that supper was defrayed out of the funds in Judas’ keeping. The whole account leaves the impression that it was provided by Lazarus and his sisters, although strictly speaking, ἐποίησαν (ver. 2) leaves it undetermined.—Tr. 1043 Chap. xiii. 27, 29. 1044 Phil. ii. 21. 1045 1 John ii. 6. 1046 Matt. vi. 3. 1047 Matt. xxv. 40. 1048 Rom. x. 4. down His life for many.”1049 Every one, therefore, is the servant of Christ in the same way as Christ also is a servant. And he that serveth Christ in this way will be honored by His Father with the signal honor of being with His Son, and having nothing wanting to his happiness for ever.

13. Accordingly, brethren, when you hear the Lord saying, “Where I am, there shall also my servant be,” do not think merely of good bishops and clergymen. But be yourselves also in your own way serving Christ, by good lives, by giving alms, by preaching His name and doctrine as you can; and every father of a family also, be acknowledging in this name the affection he owes as a parent to his family. For Christ’s sake, and for the sake of life eternal, let him be warning, and teaching, and exhorting, and correcting all his household; let him show kindliness, and exercise discipline; and so in his own house he will be filling an ecclesiastical and kind of episcopal office, and serving Christ, that he may be with Him for ever. For even that noblest service of suffering has been rendered by many of your class; for many who were neither bishops nor clergy, but young men and virgins, those advanced in years with those who were not, many married persons both male and female, many fathers and mothers of families, have served Christ even to the laying down of their lives in martyrdom for His sake, and have been honored by the Father in receiving crowns of exceeding glory.

1. After the Lord Jesus Christ, in the words of yesterday’s lesson, had exhorted His servants to follow Him, and had predicted His own passion in this way, that unless a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit; and also had stirred up those who wished to follow Him to the kingdom of heaven, to hate their life in this world if their thought was to keep it unto life eternal,—He again toned down His own feelings to our infirmity and says, where our lesson to-day commenced, “Now is my soul1050 troubled.” Whence, Lord, was Thy soul troubled? He had, indeed, said a little before, “He that hateth his life soul in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” Dost thou then love thy life in this world, and is thy soul troubled as the hour approacheth when thou shalt leave this world? Who would dare affirm this of the soul [life] of the Lord? We rather it was whom He transferred unto Himself; He took us into His own person as our Head, and assumed the feelings of His members; and so it was not by any others He was troubled, but, as was said of Him when He raised Lazarus, “He was troubled in Himself.”1051 For it behoved the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, just as He has lifted us up to the heights of heaven, to descend with us also into the lowest depths of suffering.

2. I hear Him saying a little before, “The hour cometh that the Son of man should be glorified: if a corn of wheat die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” I hear this also, “He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” Nor am I permitted merely to admire, but commanded to imitate, and so, by the words that follow, “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be,” I am all on fire to despise the world, and in my sight the whole of this life, however lengthened, becomes only a vapor; in comparison with my love for eternal things, all that is temporal has lost its value with me. And now, again, it is my Lord Himself, who by such words has suddenly transported me from the weakness that was mine to the strength that was His, that I hear saying, “Now is my soul troubled.” What does it mean? How biddest Thou my soul follow Thee if I behold Thine own troubled? How shall I endure what is felt to be heavy by strength so great? What is the kind of foundation I can seek if the Rock is giving way? But methinks I hear in my 1050 The word anima used here, and frequently elsewhere, and corresponding to the Greek ψυχή, denotes “human life,” in reference to its internal principle or substance; and differs from “vita” (Gr. ζωή), as in the words following above, “unto eternal life” (vitam), which expresses rather the general idea of life in its existence, aggregate qualities, and duration. Our English word “soul,” which best corresponds with anima, is, however, more restricted in the idea which it popularly suggests; and hence, as in our English version of the Scriptures, the apparent confusion, which is unavoidable, in translating anima sometimes by “soul” and sometimes by “life.”—Tr. 1051 Chap. xi. 33: literally, as in margin of English Bible, “He troubled Himself.” own thoughts the Lord giving me an answer, saying, Thou shalt follow me the better, because it is to aid thy power of endurance that I thus interpose. Thou hast heard, as addressed to thyself, the voice of my fortitude; hear in me the voice of thy infirmity: I supply strength for thy running, and I check not thy hastening, but I transfer to myself thy causes for trembling, and I pave the way for thy marching along. O Lord our Mediator, God above us, man for us, I own Thy mercy! For because Thou, who art so great, art troubled through the good will of Thy love, Thou preservest, by the richness of Thy comfort, the many in Thy body who are troubled by the continual experience of their own weakness, from perishing utterly in their despair.

3. In a word, let the man who would follow learn the road by which he must travel. Perhaps an hour of terrible trial has come, and the choice is set before thee either to do iniquity or endure suffering; the weak soul is troubled, on whose behalf the invincible soul [of Jesus] was voluntarily troubled; set then the will of God before thine own. For notice what is immediately subjoined by thy Creator and thy Master, by Him who made thee, and became Himself for thy teaching that which He made; for He who made man was made man, but He remained still the unchangeable God, and transplanted manhood into a better condition. Listen, then, to what He adds to the words, “Now is my soul troubled.” “And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name.” He has taught thee here what to think of, what to say, on whom to call, in whom to hope, and whose will, as sure and divine, to prefer to thine own, which is human and weak. Imagine Him not, therefore, as losing aught of His own exalted position in wishing thee to rise up out of the depths of thy ruin. For He thought it meet also to be tempted by the devil, by whom otherwise He would never have been tempted, just as, had He not been willing, He would never have suffered; and the answers He gave to the devil are such as thou also oughtest to use in times of temptation.1052 And He, indeed, was tempted, but not endangered, that He might show thee, when in danger through temptation, how to answer the tempter, so as not to be carried away by the temptation, but to escape its danger. But when He here said, “Now is my soul troubled;” and also when He says, “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death;” and “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;” He assumed the infirmity of man, to teach him, when thereby saddened and troubled, to say what follows: “Nevertheless, Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”1053 For thus it is that man is turned from the human to the divine, when the will of God is preferred to his own. But to what do the words “Glorify Thy name” refer, but to His own passion and resurrection? For what else can it mean, but that the Father should thus glorify the Son, who in like manner glorifieth His own name in the similar sufferings of His servants? Hence it is 1052 Matt. iv. 1–10. 1053 Matt. xxvi. 38, 39. recorded of Peter, that for this cause He said concerning him, “Another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not,” because He intended to signify “by what death he should glorify God.”1054 Therefore in him, too, did God glorify His name, because thus also does He glorify Christ in His members.

4. “Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” “I have both glorified it,” before I created the world, “and I will glorify it again,” when He shall rise from the dead and ascend into heaven. It may also be otherwise understood. “I have both glorified it,”—when He was born of the Virgin, when He exercised miraculous powers; when the Magi, guided by a star in the heavens, bowed in adoration before Him; when He was recognized by saints filled with the Holy Spirit; when He was openly proclaimed by the descent of the Spirit in the form of a dove, and pointed out by the voice that sounded from heaven; when He was transfigured on the mount; when He wrought many miracles, cured and cleansed multitudes, fed so vast a number with a very few loaves, commanded the winds and the waves, and raised the dead;—“and I will glorify it again;” when He shall rise from the dead; when death shall have no longer dominion over Him; and when He shall be exalted over the heavens as God, and His glory over all the earth.

5. “The people therefore that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to Him. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.” He thereby showed that the voice made no intimation to Him of what He already knew, but to those who needed the information. And just as that voice was uttered by God, not on His account, but on that of others, so His soul was troubled, not on His own account, but voluntarily for the sake of others.

6. Look at what follows: “Now,” He says, “is the judgment of the world.” What, then, are we to expect at the end of time? But the judgment that is looked for in the end will be the judging of the living and the dead, the awarding of eternal rewards and punishment. Of what sort, then, is the judgment now? I have already, in former lessons, as far as I could, put you in mind, beloved, that there is a judgment spoken of, not of condemnation, but of discrimination; 1055 as it is written, “Judge me, O God, and plead discern, discriminate my cause against an unholy nation.”1056 And many are the judgments of God; as it is said in the psalm, “Thy judgments are a great deep.”1057 And the apostle also says, “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments!” 1058 To such judgments does that spoken of here by the Lord also belong, “Now is 1054 Chap. xxi. 18, 19. 1055 Or, discernment, discretio; see Tract. XLIII. sec. 9. 1056 Ps. xliii. 1. 1057 Ps. xxxvi. 6. 1058 Rom. xi. 33. the judgment of this world;” while that judgment in the end is reserved, when the living and the dead shall at last be judged. The devil, therefore, had possession of the human race, and held them by the written bond of their sins as criminals amenable to punishment; he ruled in the hearts of unbelievers, and, deceiving and enslaving them, seduced them to forsake the Creator and give worship to the creature; but by faith in Christ, which was confirmed by His death and resurrection, and, by His blood, which was shed for the remission of sins, thousands of believers are delivered from the dominion of the devil, are united to the body of Christ, and under this great head are made by His one Spirit to spring up into new life as His faithful members. This it was that He called the judgment, this righteous separation, this expulsion of the devil from His own redeemed.

7. Attend, in short, to His own words. For just as if we had been inquiring what He meant by saying, “Now is the judgment of the world,” He proceeded to explain it when He says, “Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” What we have thus heard was the kind of judgment He meant. Not that one, therefore, which is yet to come in the end, when the living and dead shall be judged, some of them set apart on His right hand, and the others on His left; but that judgment by which “the prince of this world shall be cast out.” In what sense, then, was he within, and whither did He mean that he was to be cast out? Was it this: That he was in the world. and was cast forth beyond its boundaries? For had He been speaking of that judgment which is yet to come in the end, some one’s thoughts might have turned to that eternal fire into which the devil is to be cast with his angels, and all who belong to him;—that is, not naturally, but through moral delinquency; not because he created or begat them, but because he persuaded and kept hold of them: some one, therefore, might have thought that that eternal fire was outside the world, and that this was the meaning of the words, “he shall be cast out.” But as He says, “Now is the judgment of this world,” and in explanation of His meaning, adds, “Now shall the prince of this world be cast out,” we are thereby to understand what is now being done, and not what is to be, so long afterwards, at the last day. The Lord, therefore, foretold what He knew, that after His own passion and glorification, many nations throughout the whole world, in whose hearts the devil was an inmate, would become believers, and the devil, when thus renounced by faith, is cast out.

8. But some one says, Was he then not cast out of the hearts of the patriarchs and prophets, and the righteous of olden time? Certainly he was. How, then, is it said, “Now he shall be cast out”? How else can we think of it, but that what was then done in the case of a very few individuals, was now foretold as speedily to take place in many and mighty nations? Just as also that other saying, “For the Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified,”1059 may suggest a similar inquiry, and find a similar solution. For it was not without the Holy Spirit that the prophets predicted the events of the future; nor was it so 1059 Chap. vii. 39. that the aged Simeon and the widowed Anna knew by the Holy Spirit the infant Lord;1060 and that Zacharias and Elisabeth uttered by the Holy Spirit so many predictions concerning Him, when He was not yet born, but only conceived.1061 But “the Spirit was not yet given;” that is, with that abundance of spiritual grace which enabled those assembled together to speak in every language,1062 and thus announce beforehand in the language of every nation the Church of the future: and so by this spiritual grace it was that nations were gathered into congregations, sins were pardoned far and wide, and thousands of thousands were reconciled unto God.

9. But then, says some one, since the devil is thus cast out of the hearts of believers, does he now tempt none of the faithful? Nay, verily, he does not cease to tempt. But it is one thing to reign within, another to assail from without; for in like manner the best fortified city is sometimes attacked by an enemy without being taken. And if some of his arrows are discharged, and reach us, the apostle reminds us how to render them harmless, when he speaks of the breastplate and the shield of faith.1063 And if he sometimes wounds us, we have the remedy at hand. For as the combatants are told, “These things I write unto you, that ye sin not:” so those who are wounded have the sequel to listen to, “And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins.”1064 And what do we pray for when we say, “Forgive us our debts,” but for the healing of our wounds? And what else do we ask, when we say, “Lead us not into temptation,”1065 but that he who thus lies in wait for us, or assails us from without, may fail on every side to effect an entrance, and be unable to overcome us either by fraud or force? Nevertheless, whatever engines of war he may erect against us, so long as he has no more a place in the heart that faith inhabits, he is cast out. But “except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”1066 Presume not, therefore, about yourselves, if you would not have the devil, who has once been cast out, to be recalled within.

10. On the other hand, let us be far from supposing that the devil is called in any such way the prince of the world, as that we should believe him possessed of power to rule over the heaven and the earth. The world is so spoken of in respect of wicked men, who have overspread the whole earth; just as a house is spoken of in respect to its inhabitants, and we accordingly say, It is a good house, or a bad house; not as finding fault with, or approving 1060 Luke ii. 25–38. 1061 Luke i. 41–45, 67–69. 1062 Acts ii. 4–6. 1063 1 Thess. v. 8. 1064 1 John ii. 1, 2. 1065 Matt. vi. 12, 13. 1066 Ps. cxxvii. 1. of, the erection of walls and roofs, but the morals either of the good or the bad within it. In a similar way, therefore, it is said, “The prince of this world;” that is, the prince of all the wicked who inhabit this world. The world is also spoken of in respect to the good, who in like manner have overspread the whole earth; and hence the apostle says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.”1067 These are they out of whose hearts the prince of this world is ejected.

11. Accordingly, after saying, “Now shall the prince of this world be cast out,” He added, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things1068 after me.” And what “all” is that, but those out of which the other is ejected? But He did not say, All men, but “all things;” for all men have not faith.1069 And, therefore, He did not allude to the totality of men, but to the creature in its personal integrity, that is, to spirit, and soul, and body; or all that which makes us the intelligent, living, visible, and palpable beings we are. For He who said, “Not a hair of your head shall perish,”1070 is He who draweth all things after Him. Or if by “all things” it is men that are to be understood, we can speak of all things that are foreordained to salvation: of all which He declared, when previously speaking of His sheep, that not one of them would be lost.1071 And of a certainty all classes of men, both of every language and every age, and all grades of rank, and all diversities of talents, and all the professions of lawful and useful arts, and all else that can be named in accordance with the innumerable differences by which men, save in sin alone, are mutually separated, from the highest to the lowest, and from the king to the beggar, “all,” He says, “will I draw after me;” that He may be their head, and they His members. But this will be, He adds, “if I be lifted up from the earth,” that is, when I am lifted up; for He has no doubt of the future accomplishment of that which He came to fulfill. He here alludes to what He said before: “But if the corn of wheat die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” For what else did He signify by His lifting up, than His suffering on the cross, an explanation which the evangelist himself has not omitted; for he has appended the words, “And this He said signifying what death He should die.”

12. “The people answered Him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest Thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? And who is this Son of man?” It had stuck to their memory that the Lord was constantly calling Himself the Son of man. For, in the passage before us, He does not say, If the Son of man be lifted up from the earth; but had called Himself so before, in the lesson which was read and expounded yesterday, 1067 2 Cor. v. 19. 1068 There are here two readings in the Greek mss., πάντας (all men), and πάντα (all things), of which the former seems now the better approved; but the latter is that adopted by Augustin and the Vulgate.—Tr. 1069 2 Thess. iii. 2. 1070 Luke xxi. 18. 1071 Chap. x. 28. when those Gentiles were announced who desired to see Him: “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified” (ver. 23). Retaining this, therefore, in their minds, and understanding what He now said, “When I am lifted up from the earth,” of the death of the cross, they inquired of Him, and said, “We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever; and how sayest Thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man?” For if it is Christ, He, they say, abideth for ever; and if He abideth for ever, how shall He be lifted up from the earth, that is, how shall He die through the suffering of the cross? For they understood Him to have spoken of what they themselves were meditating to do. And so He did not dissipate for them the obscurity of such words by imparting wisdom, but by stimulating their conscience.

13. “Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little1072 light is in you.” And by this it is you understand that Christ abideth for ever. “Walk, then, while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.” Walk, draw near, come to the full understanding that Christ shall both die and shall live for ever; that He shall shed His blood to redeem us, and ascend on high to carry His redeemed along with Him. But darkness will come upon you, if your belief in Christ’s eternity is of such a kind as to refuse to admit in His case the humiliation of death. “And he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.” So may he stumble on that stone of stumbling and rock of offence which the Lord Himself became to the blinded Jews: just as to those who believed, the stone which the builders despised was made the head of the corner.1073 Hence, they thought Christ unworthy of their belief; because in their impiety they treated His dying with contempt, they ridiculed the idea of His being slain: and yet it was the very death of the grain of corn that was to lead to its own multiplication, and the lifting up of one who was drawing all things after Him. “While ye have the light,” He adds, “believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.” While you have possession of some truth that you have heard, believe in the truth, that you may be born again in the truth.

14. “These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide Himself from them.” Not from those who had begun to believe and to love Him, nor from those who had come to meet Him with branches of palm trees and songs of praise; but from those who saw and hated Him, for they saw Him not, but only stumbled on that stone in their blindness. But when Jesus hid Himself from those who desired to slay Him (as you need from forgetfulness to be often reminded), He had regard to our human weakness, but derogated not in aught from His own authority.

1. When our Lord Christ, foretelling His own passion, and the fruitfulness of His death in being lifted up on the cross, said that He would draw all [things] after Him; and when the Jews, understanding that He spake of His death, put to Him the question how He could speak of death as awaiting Him, when they heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever; He exhorted them, while still they had in them the little light, which had so taught them that Christ was eternal, to walk, to make themselves acquainted with the whole subject, lest they should be overtaken with darkness. And, when He had said this, He hid Himself from them. With these points you have been made acquainted in former Lord’s day lessons and discourses.

2. The evangelist thereafter brings forward what has formed the brief subject of to-day’s reading, and says, “But though He had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on Him: that the saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Where he makes it sufficiently plain that the Son of God is Himself the arm of the Lord; not that the person of God the Father is determined by the shape of human flesh, and that the Son is attached to Him as a member of His body; but because all things were made by Him, and therefore He is designated the arm of the Lord. For as it is with thine arm that thou workest, so the Word of God is styled His arm; because by the Word He elaborated the world. For why does a man, in order to do some work, stretch forth his arm, but because the doing of it does not straightway follow his word? And if he was endowed with such pre-eminent power that what he said was done without any movement of his body, then would his word be his arm. But the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God the Father, as He is no mere member of the Father’s body, so is He no mere thinkable, and audible, and transitory word; for, as all things were made by Him, He was the word of God.

3. When, therefore, we hear that the Son of God is the arm of God the Father, let no carnal custom raise its distracting din in our ears; but as far as His grace enables us, let us think of that power and wisdom of God by which all things were made. Surely such an arm as that is neither held out by stretching, nor drawn in by contracting it. For He is not one and the same with the Father, but He and the Father are one; and as equal with the Father, He is in all respects complete, as well as the Father: so that no room is left open for the abominable error of those who assert that the Father alone exists, but according to the difference of causes is Himself sometimes called the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit; and so also from these words may venture to say, See you perceive that the Father alone exists, if the Son is His arm: for a man and his arm are not two persons, but one. Not understanding nor considering how words are transferred from one thing to another, on account of some mutual likeness, even in our daily forms of speech about things the most familiar and visible; and how much the more must it be so, in order that things ineffable may find some sort of expression in our speech, things which, as they really exist, cannot be expressed in words at all? For even one man styles another his arm, by whom he is accustomed to transact his business: and if he is deprived of him, he says in his grief, I have lost my arm; and to him who has taken him away, he says, You have deprived me of my arm. Let them understand, then, the sense in which the Son is termed the arm of the Father, as that by which the Father hath executed all His works; that they may not, by failing to understand this, and continuing in the darkness of their error, resemble those Jews of whom it was said, “And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

4. And here we meet with the second question, to treat of which, indeed, in any adequate manner, to investigate all its mysterious windings, and throw them open to the light in a befitting way, I think within the scope neither of my own powers, nor of the shortness of the time, nor of your capacity. Yet, as we cannot allow ourselves so far to disappoint your expectations as to pass on to other topics without saying something on this, take what we shall be able to offer you: and wherein we fail to satisfy your expectations, ask the increase of Him who appointed us to plant and to water; for, as the apostle saith, “Neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.”1074 There are some, then, who mutter among themselves, and sometimes speak out when they can, and even break forth into turbulent debate, saying: What did the Jews do, or what fault was it of theirs, if it was a necessity “that the saying of Isaiah the prophet should be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” To whom our answer is, that the Lord, in His foreknowledge of the future, foretold by the prophet the unbelief of the Jews; He foretold it, but did not cause it. For God does not compel any one to sin simply because He knows already the future sins of men. For He foreknew sins that were theirs, not His own; sins that were referable to no one else, but to their own selves. Accordingly, if what He foreknew as theirs is not really theirs, then had He no true foreknowledge: but as His foreknowledge is infallible, it is doubtless no one else, but they themselves, whose sinfulness God foreknew, that are the sinners. The Jews, therefore, committed sin, with no compulsion to do so on His part, to whom sin is an object of displeasure; but He foretold their committing of it, because nothing is concealed from His knowledge. And accordingly, had they wished to do good instead of evil, they would not have been hindered; but in this which they were to do they were foreseen of Him who knows what every man will do, and what He is yet to render unto such an one according to his work.

1. Whilst our Lord Jesus Christ was speaking among the Jews, and giving so many miraculous signs, some believed who were foreordained to eternal life, and whom He also called His sheep; but some did not believe, and could not believe, because that, by the mysterious yet not unrighteous judgment of God, they had been blinded and hardened, because forsaken of Him who resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. 1104 But of those who believed, there were some whose confession went so far, that they took branches of palm trees, and met Him as He approached, turning in their joy that very confession into a service of praise: while there were others, belonging to the chief rulers, who had not the boldness to confess their faith, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; and whom the evangelist has branded with the words, that “they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God “(ver. 43). Of those also who did not believe, there were some who would afterwards believe, and whom He foresaw, when He said, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye acknowledge that I am He:”1105 but there were some who would remain in the same unbelief, and be imitated by the Jewish nation of the present day, which, being shortly afterwards crushed in war, according to the prophetic testimony which was written concerning Christ, has since been scattered almost through the whole world.

2. While matters were in this state, and His own passion was now at hand, “Jesus cried, and said,” as our lesson to-day commences, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me; and he that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me.” He had already said in a certain place, “My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me.”1106 Where we understood that He called His doctrine just what He is Himself, the Word of the Father; and in saying, “My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me,” implied this, that He was not of Himself, but had His being from another.1107 For He was God of God, the Son of the Father: but the Father is not God of God, but God, the Father of the Son. And now when He says, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me,” how else are we to understand it, but that He appeared as man to men, while He remained invisible as God? And that none might think that He was no more than what they saw of Him, He indicated His wish to be believed on, as equal in character and rank with the Father, when He said, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me,” that is, merely on what he seeth of me, “but on Him that sent me,” that is, on the Father. But he that believeth on the Father, must believe 1104 Jas. iv. 6. 1105 Chap. viii. 28. 1106 Chap. vii. 16. 1107 Tract. XXIX., haberet a quo esset. that He is the Father; and he that believeth on Him as the Father, must believe that He has a Son; and in this way, he that believeth on the Father, must believe on the Son. But let no one believe about the only-begotten Son just what they believe about those who are called the sons of God by grace and not by nature, as the evangelist says, “He gave them power to become the sons of God,”1108 and according to what the Lord Himself also mentioned, as declared in the law, “I said, Ye are gods; and all of you children of the Most High:”1109 because He said, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me,” to show that the whole extent of our faith in Christ should not be limited by His manhood. He therefore, He saith, believeth on me, who doth not believe on me merely according to what he seeth of me, but on Him that sent me: so that, believing thus on the Father, he may believe that He has a Son co-equal with Himself, and then attain to a true faith in me. For if one should think that He has sons only according to grace, who are certainly no more than His creatures, and not the Word, but those made by the Word, and that He has no Son co-equal and co-eternal with Himself, ever born, alike incommutable, in nothing dissimilar and inferior, then he believes not on the Father who sent Him, for the Father who sent Him is no such conception as this.

3. And, accordingly, after saying, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me,” that it might not be thought that He would have the Father so understood, as if He were the Father only of many sons regenerated by grace, and not of the only-begotten Word, His own co-equal, He immediately added, “And he that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me.” Does He say here, He that seeth me, seeth not me, but Him that sent me, as He had said, “He that believeth me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me”? For He uttered the former of these words, that He might not be believed on merely as He then appeared, that is, as the Son of man; and the latter, that He might be believed on as the equal of the Father. He that believeth on me, believeth not merely on what He sees of me, but believeth on Him that sent me. Or, when he believeth on the Father, who begat me, His own co-equal, let him believe on me, not as he seeth me, but as he believeth on Him that sent me; for so far does the truth, that there is no distance between Him and me, reach, that He who seeth me, seeth Him that sent me. Certainly, Christ the Lord Himself sent His apostles, as their name implies: for as those who in Greek are called angeli are in Latin called nuntii messengers, so the Greek apostoli apostles becomes the Latin missi persons sent. But never would any of the apostles have dared to say, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me;” for in no sense whatever would he say, “He that believeth on me.” We believe an apostle, but we do not believe on him; for it is not an apostle that justifieth the ungodly. But to him that believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.1110 An apostle might say, He that receiveth me, receiveth Him 1108 Chap. i. 12. 1109 Chap. x. 34; Ps. lxxxii. 6. 1110 Rom. iv. 5. that sent me; or, He that heareth me, heareth Him that sent me; for the Lord tells them so Himself: “He that receiveth you, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent me.”1111 For the master is honored in the servant, and the father in the son: but then the father is as it were in the son, and the master as it were in the servant. But the only-begotten Son could rightly say, “Believe on God, and believe on me;”1112 as also what He saith here, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me.” He did not turn away the faith of the believer from Himself, but only would not have the believer continue in the form of a servant: because every one who believeth in the Father that sent Him, straightway believeth on the Son, without whom he knoweth that the Father hath no existence as such, and thus reacheth in his faith to the belief of His equality with the Father, in conformity with the words that follow, “And he that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me.”

4. Attend to what follows: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.” He said in a certain place to His disciples, “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; that it may give light to all that are in the house: so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven:”1113 but He did not say to them, Ye are come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on you should not abide in darkness. Such a statement, I maintain, can nowhere be met with. All the saints, therefore, are lights, but they are illuminated by Him through faith; and every one that becomes separated from Him will be enveloped in darkness. But that Light, which enlightens them, cannot become separated from itself; for it is altogether beyond the reach of change. We believe, then, the light that has thus been lit, as the prophet or apostle: but we believe him for this end, that we may not believe on that which is itself enlightened, but, with him, on that Light which has given him light; so that we, too, may be enlightened, not by him, but, along with him, by the same Light as he. And when He saith, “That whosoever believeth on me may not abide in darkness,” He makes it sufficiently manifest that all have been found by Him in a state of darkness: but that they may not abide in the darkness wherein they have been found, they ought to believe on that Light which hath come into the world, for thereby was the world created.

5. “And if any man,” He says, “hear my words, and keep them not, I judge him not.” Remember what I know you have heard in former lessons; and if any of you have forgotten, recall it: and those of you who were absent then, but are present now, hear how it is that the Son saith, “I judge him not,” while in another place He says, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son;”1114 namely, that thereby we are to under- 1111 Matt. x. 40. 1112 Chap. xiv. 1. 1113 Matt. v. 14–16. 1114 Chap. v. 22. stand, It is not now that I judge him. And why not now? Listen to the sequel: “For I am not come,” He says, “to judge the world, but to save the world;” that is, to bring the world into a state of salvation. Now, therefore, is the season of mercy, afterwards will be the time for judgment: for He says, “I will sing to Thee, O Lord, of mercy and judgment.”1115

6. But see also what He says of that future judgment in the end: “He that despiseth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.” He says not, He that despiseth me, and receiveth not my words, I judge him not at the last day; for had He said so, I do not see how it could have been else than contradictory of that other statement, when He says, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.” But when He said, “He that despiseth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one to judge him,” and, for the information of those who were waiting to hear who that one was, went on to add, “The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day,” He made it sufficiently manifest that He Himself would then be the judge. For it was of Himself He spake, Himself He announced, and Himself He set forth as the gate whereby He entered as the Shepherd to His sheep. In one way, therefore, will those be judged who have never heard that word, in another way those who have heard and despised. “For as many as have sinned without law,” says the apostle, “shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law.”1116

7. “For I have not,” He says, “spoken of myself.” He says that He has not spoken of Himself, because He is not of Himself. Of this we have frequently discoursed already; so that now, without any more instruction, we have simply to remind you of it as a truth with which you are familiar. “But the Father who sent me, He gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak.” We would not stay to elaborate this, did we know that we were now speaking with those with whom we have spoken on former occasions, and of these, not with all, but such only whose memories have retained what they heard: but because there are perhaps some now present who did not hear, and some in a similar condition who have forgotten what they heard, on their account let those who remember what they have heard bear with our delay. How giveth the Father a commandment to His only Son? With what words doth He speak to the Word, seeing that the Son Himself is the only-begotten Word? Could it be by an angel, seeing that by Him the angels were created? Was it by means of a cloud, which, when it gave forth its sound to the Son, gave it not on His account, as He Himself also tells us elsewhere, but for the sake of others who were needing to hear it (ver. 29)? Could it be by any sound issuing from the lips, where bodily form was wanting, and where there is no such local distance separating the Son from the Father as to admit of any 1115 Ps. ci. 1. 1116 Rom. ii. 12. intervening air, to give effect, by its percussion, to the voice, and render it audible? Let us put away all such unworthy notions of that incorporeal and ineffable subsistence. The only Son is the Word and the Wisdom of the Father, and therein are all the commandments of the Father. For there was no time that the Son knew not the Father’s commandment, so as to make it necessary for Him to possess in course of time what He possessed not before. For what He has received from the Father, He received in being born, and was given it in being begotten. For the life He is, and life He certainly received in being born, while yet there was no antecedent time when life was wanting to His personal existence. For, on the one hand, the Father has life, and is what He has: and yet He received it not, because He is not of any one. But the Son received life as the Father’s gift, of whom He is: and so He Himself is what He has; for He has life, and is the life. Listen to Himself when He says, “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.”1117 Could He give it to one who was in being, and yet hitherto was destitute thereof? On the contrary, in the very begetting it was given by Him who begat the life, and so life begat the life. And to show that He begat the life equal, and not inferior to Himself, it was said, “As He hath life in Himself, so hath He also given to the Son to have life in Himself.” He gave life; for in begetting the life, what was it He gave Him, save to be the life? And as His nativity is itself eternal, there never was a time without that Son who is the life, and never was there a time when the Son Himself was without the life; and as His nativity is eternal, so He, who was thus born, is eternal life. And so the Father gave not to the Son a commandment which He had not already; but, as I said, in the Wisdom of the Father, that is, in the word of the Father, are laid up all the Father’s commandments. And yet the commandment is said to have been given Him, because He, to whom it is thus given, is not of Himself: and to give that to the Son which He never was without, is the same in meaning as to beget that Son who never was without existence.

8. There follow the words: “And I know that His commandment is life everlasting.” If, then, the Son Himself is eternal life, and the Father’s commandment the same, what else is expressed than this, I am the Father’s commandment? And in like manner, in what He proceeds to say, “Whatsoever I speak, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak,” let us not be taking the “said unto me” as if the Father used words in speaking to the only Word, or that the Word of God needed words from God. The Father spake to the Son in the same way as He gave life to the Son; not that He knew not the one, or had not the other, but just because He was the Son. What, then, do the words mean, “Even as He said unto me, so I speak;” but just, I speak the truth? So the former said as the Truthful One1118 what the latter thus spake as the Truth. The Truthful begat the Truth. What, then, could He now say to the 1117 Chap. v. 26. 1118 Verax. Truth? For the Truth had no imperfection to be supplied by additional truth. He spake, therefore, to the Truth, because He begat the Truth. And in like manner the Truth Himself speaks what has been said to Him; but only to those who have understanding, and who are taught by Him as the God-begotten Truth. But that men might believe what they had not yet capacity to understand, words that were audible issued from His human lips; sounds passing rapidly away broke on the ear, and speedily completed the little term of their duration: but the truths themselves, of which the sounds are but signs, passed, as it were, into the memory of those who heard them, and have come down to us also by means of written characters as signs addressed to the eye. But it is not thus that the Truth speaks; He speaks inwardly to the souls of the intelligent; He needs no sound to instruct, but floods the mind with the light of understanding. And he, then, who in that light is able to behold the eternity of His birth, himself hears in the same way the Truth speaking, as He heard the Father telling Him what He should speak. He has awakened in us a great longing for that sweet experience of His presence within; but it is by daily growth that we acquire it; it is by walking that we grow, and it is by forward efforts we walk, so as to be able at last to attain it.

1. The Lord’s Supper, as set forth in John, must, with His assistance, be unfolded in a becoming number of Lectures, and explained with all the ability He is pleased to grant us. “Now, before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” Pascha (passover) is not, as some think, a Greek noun, but a Hebrew: and yet there occurs in this noun a very suitable kind of accordance in the two languages. For inasmuch as the Greek word paschein means to suffer, therefore pascha has been supposed to mean suffering, as if the noun derived its name from His passion: but in its own language, that is, in Hebrew, pascha means passover;1119 because the pascha was then celebrated for the first time by God’s people, when, in their flight from Egypt, they passed over the Red Sea.1120 And now that prophetic emblem is fulfilled in truth, when Christ is led as a sheep to the slaughter,1121 that by His blood sprinkled on our doorposts, that is, by the sign of His cross marked on our foreheads, we may be delivered from the perdition awaiting this world, as Israel from the bondage and destruction of the Egyptians;1122 and a most salutary transit we make when we pass over from the devil to Christ, and from this unstable world to His well-established kingdom. And therefore surely do we pass over to the ever-abiding God, that we may not pass away with this passing world. The apostle, in extolling God for such grace bestowed upon us, says: “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”1123 This name, then, of pascha, which, as I have said, is in Latin called transitus (pass over), is interpreted, as it were, for us by the blessed evangelist, when he says, “Before the feast of pascha, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should pass out of this world to the Father.” Here you see we have both pascha and pass-over. Whence, and whither does He pass? Namely, “out of this world to the Father.” The hope was thus given to the members in their Head, that they doubtless would yet follow Him who was “passing” before. And what, then, of unbelievers, who stand altogether apart from this Head and His members? Do not they also pass away, seeing that they abide not here always? They also do plainly 1119 Transitus, transit, pass over.—Tr. 1120 Ex. xiv. 29. A curious mistake of Augustin’s to derive the name of the feast from Israel’s passing over the Red Sea, instead of Jehovah’s passing over the houses of the Israelites, when He smote the firstborn of Egypt! Compare Ex. xii. 11, 13, 23, 27.—Tr. 1121 Isa. liii. 7. 1122 Ex. xii. 23. 1123 Col. i. 13. pass away: but it is one thing to pass from the world, and another to pass away with it; one thing to pass to the Father, another to pass to the enemy. For the Egyptians also passed over the sea; but they did not pass through the sea to the kingdom, but in the sea to destruction.

2. “When Jesus knew,” then, “that His hour was come that He should pass out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” In order, doubtless, that they also, through that love of His, might pass from this world where they now were, to their Head who had passed hence before them. For what mean these words, “to the end,” but just to Christ? “For Christ is the end of the law,” says the apostle, “for righteousness to every one that believeth.”1124 The end that consummates, not that consumes; the end whereto we attain, not wherein we perish. Exactly thus are we to understand the passage, “Christ our passover is sacrificed.”1125 He is our end; into Him do we pass. For I see that these gospel words may also be taken in a kind of human sense, that Christ loved His own even unto death, so that this may be the meaning of “He loved them unto the end.” This meaning is human, not divine:1126 for it was not merely up to this point that we were loved by Him, who loveth us always and endlessly. God forbid that He, whose death could not end, should have ended His love at death. Even after death that proud and ungodly rich man loved his five brethren;1127 and is Christ to be thought of as loving us only till death? God forbid, beloved. He would have come in vain with a love for us that lasted till death, if that love had ended there. But perhaps the words, “He loved them unto the end,” may have to be understood in this way, That He so loved them as to die for them. For this He testified when He said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”1128 We have certainly no objection that “He loved them unto the end” should be so understood, that is, it was His very love that carried Him on to death.

3. “And the supper,” he says, “having taken place,1129 and the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He has come from God, and is going to God; He riseth from supper, and layeth aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.” We are not to understand by the supper having taken place, as if it were already finished and over; for it was still going on when the Lord rose and washed His disciples’ feet. For He afterwards sat down again, and gave the 1124 Rom. x. 4. 1125 1 Cor. v. 7. 1126 That is, “applies to Christ’s humanity, not His divinity.”—Tr. 1127 Luke xvi. 27, 28. 1128 Chap. xv. 13. 1129 Coena facta; δείπνου γενομένου. See Augustin’s explanation below.—Tr. morsel sop to His betrayer, implying certainly that the supper was not yet over, or, in other words, that there was still bread on the table. Therefore, by supper having taken place, is meant that it was now ready, and laid out on the table for the use of the guests.

4. But when he says, “The devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him;” if one inquires, what was put into Judas’ heart, it was doubtless this, “to betray Him.” Such a putting into the heart is a spiritual suggestion: and entereth not by the ear, but through the thoughts; and thereby not in a way that is corporal, but spiritual. For what we call spiritual is not always to be understood in a commendatory way. The apostle knew of certain spiritual things powers, of wickedness in heavenly places, against which he testifies that we have to maintain a struggle;1130 and there would not be spiritual wickednesses, were there not also wicked spirits. For it is from a spiritual being that spiritual things get their name. But how such things are done, as that devilish suggestions should be introduced, and so mingle with human thoughts that a man accounts them his own, how can he know? Nor can we doubt that good suggestions are likewise made by a good spirit in the same unobservable and spiritual way; but it is matter of concern to which of these the human mind yields assent, either as deservedly left without, or graciously aided by, the divine assistance. The determination, therefore, had now been come to in Judas’ heart by the instigation of the devil, that the disciple should betray the Master, whom he had not learned to know as his God. In such a state had he now come to their social meal, a spy on the Shepherd, a plotter against the Redeemer, a seller of the Saviour; as such was he now come, was he now seen and endured, and thought himself undiscovered: for he was deceived about Him whom he wished to deceive. But He, who had already scanned the inward state of that very heart, was knowingly making use of one who knew it not.

5. “Jesus knowing that the Father has given all things into His hands.” And therefore also the traitor himself: for if He had him not in His hands, He certainly could not use him as He wished. Accordingly, the traitor had been already betrayed to Him whom he sought to betray; and he carried out his evil purpose in betraying Him in such a way, that good he knew not of was the issue in regard to Him who was betrayed. For the Lord knew what He was doing for His friends, and patiently made use of His enemies: and thus had the Father given all things into His hands, both the evil for present use, and the good for the final issue. “Knowing also that He has come from God, and is going to God:” neither quitting God when He came from Him, nor us when He returned.

6. Knowing, then, these things, “He riseth from supper, and layeth aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.” We ought, dearly beloved, carefully to mark the meaning of the evangelist; because that, when 1130 Eph. vi. 12. about to speak of the pre-eminent humility of the Lord, it was his desire first to commend His majesty. It is in reference to this that he says, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He has come from God, and is going to God.” It is He, therefore, into whose hands the Father had given all things, who now washes, not the disciples’ hands, but their feet: and it was just while knowing that He had come from God, and was proceeding to God, that He discharged the office of a servant, not of God the Lord, but of man. And this also is referred to by the prefatory notice he has been pleased to make of His betrayer, who was now come as such, and was not unknown to Him; that the greatness of His humility should be still further enhanced by the fact that He did not esteem it beneath His dignity to wash also the feet of one whose hands He already foresaw to be steeped in wickedness.

7. But why should we wonder that He rose from supper, and laid aside His garments, who, being in the form of God, made Himself of no reputation?1131 And why should we wonder, if He girded Himself with a towel, who took upon Him the form of a servant, and was found in the likeness of a man?1132 Why wonder, if He poured water into a basin wherewith to wash His disciples’ feet, who poured His blood upon the earth to wash away the filth of their sins? Why wonder, if with the towel wherewith He was girded He wiped the feet He had washed, who with the very flesh that clothed Him laid a firm pathway for the footsteps of His evangelists? In order, indeed, to gird Himself with the towel, He laid aside the garments He wore; but when He emptied Himself of His divine glory in order to assume the form of a servant, He laid not down what He had, but assumed that which He had not before. When about to be crucified, He was indeed stripped of His garments, and when dead was wrapped in linen clothes: and all that suffering of His is our purification. When, therefore, about to suffer the last extremities [of humiliation,] He here illustrated beforehand its friendly compliances; not only to those for whom He was about to endure death, but to him also who had resolved on betraying Him to death. Because so great is the beneficence of human humility, that even the Divine Majesty was pleased to commend it by His own example; for proud man would have perished eternally, had he not been found by the lowly God. For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.1133 And as he was lost by imitating the pride of the deceiver, let him now, when found, imitate the Redeemer’s humility.

1. When the Lord was washing the disciples’ feet, “He cometh to Simon Peter; and Peter saith unto Him, Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?” For who would not be filled with fear at having his feet washed by the Son of God? Although, therefore, it was a piece of the greatest audacity for the servant to contradict his Lord, the creature his God; yet Peter preferred doing this to the suffering of his feet to be washed by his Lord and God. Nor ought we to think that Peter was one amongst others who so expressed their fear and refusal, seeing that others before him had suffered it to be done to themselves with cheerfulness and equanimity. For it is easier so to understand the words of the Gospel, because that, after saying, “He began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded,” it is then added, “Then cometh He to Simon Peter,” as if He had already washed the feet of some, and after them had now come to the first of them all. For who can fail to know that the most blessed Peter was the first of the apostles? But we are not so to understand it, that it was after some others that He came to him; but that He began with him.1134 When, therefore, He began to wash the disciples’ feet, He came to him with whom He began, namely, to Peter; and then Peter took fright at what any one of them might have been frightened, and said, “Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?” What is implied in this “Thou”? and what in “my”? These are subjects for thought rather than for speech; lest perchance any adequate conception the soul may have formed of such words may fail of explanation in the utterance.

2. But “Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” And not even yet, terrified as he was by the sublimity of the Lord’s action, does he allow it to be done, while ignorant of its purpose; but is unwilling to see, unable to endure, that Christ should thus humble Himself to his very feet. “Thou shalt never,” he says, “wash my feet.” What is this “never” in æternum? I will never endure, never suffer, never permit it: that is, a thing is not done “in æternum” which is never done. Then the Saviour, to terrify His reluctant patient with the danger of his own salvation, says, “If I wash thee not, thou shalt have no part with me.” He speaks in this way, “If I wash thee not,” when He was referring only to his feet; just as it is customary to say, You are trampling on me, when it is only the foot that is trampled on. And now the other, in a perturbation of love and fear, and more frightened at the thought that Christ should be withheld from him, than even to see Him humbled at his feet, exclaims, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” Since this, indeed, is Thy threat, that my bodily members must be 1134 It is curious to notice how Augustin here contradicts his previous and natural explanation of the passage, in order to uphold the primacy of Peter. It looks as if here he suddenly felt that his former words were rather adverse to the notion.—Tr. washed by Thee, not only do I no longer withhold the lowest, but I lay the foremost also at Thy disposal. Deny me not having a part with Thee, and I deny Thee not any part of my body to be washed.

3. “Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.” Some one perhaps may be aroused at this, and say: Nay, but if he is every whit clean, what need has He even to wash his feet? But the Lord knew what He was saying, even though our weakness reach not into His secret purposes. Nevertheless, so far as He is pleased to instruct and teach us out of His law, up to the little measure of my apprehension, I would also, with His help, make some answer bearing on the depths of this question: and, first of all, I shall have no difficulty in showing that there is no self-contradiction in the manner of expression. For who may not say, as here, with the greatest propriety, He is all clean, except1135 his feet?—although he would speak with greater elegance were he to say, He is all clean, save1136 his feet; which is equivalent in meaning. Thus, then, doth the Lord say, “He needeth not save to wash his feet, but is all clean.” All, that is, except, or save1137 his feet, which he still needs to wash.

4. But what is this? what does it mean? and what is there in it we need to examine? The Lord says, The Truth declares that even he who has been washed has need still to wash his feet. What, my brethren, what think you of it, save that in holy baptism a man has all of him washed, not all save his feet, but every whit; and yet, while thereafter living in this human state, he cannot fail to tread on the ground with his feet. And thus our human feelings themselves, which are inseparable from our mortal life on earth, are like feet wherewith we are brought into sensible contact with human affairs; and are so in such a way, that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.1138 And every day, therefore, is He who intercedeth for us,1139 washing our feet: and that we, too have daily need to be washing our feet, that is ordering aright the path of our spiritual footsteps, we acknowledge even in the Lord’s prayer, when we say, “Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.”1140 For “if,” as it is written, “we confess our sins,” then verily is He, who 1135 Of course, it is a mere elegance in the Latinity to which Augustin here refers, as between præter pedes and nisi pedes, when qualifying the expression, “Mundus est totus” (he is all clean).—Tr. 1136 Of course, it is a mere elegance in the Latinity to which Augustin here refers, as between præter pedes and nisi pedes, when qualifying the expression, “Mundus est totus” (he is all clean).—Tr. 1137 Of course, it is a mere elegance in the Latinity to which Augustin here refers, as between præter pedes and nisi pedes, when qualifying the expression, “Mundus est totus” (he is all clean).—Tr. 1138 1 John i. 8. 1139 Rom. viii. 34. 1140 Matt. vi. 12. washed His disciples’ feet, “faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,”1141 that is, even to our feet wherewith we walk on the earth.

5. Accordingly the Church, which Christ cleanseth with the washing of water in the word, is without spot and wrinkle,1142 not only in the case of those who are taken away immediately after the washing of regeneration from the contagious influence of this life, and tread not the earth so as to make necessary the washing of their feet, but in those also who have experienced such mercy from the Lord as to be enabled to quit this present life even with feet that have been washed. But although the Church be also clean in respect of those who tarry on earth, because they live righteously; yet have they need to be washing their feet, because they assuredly are not without sin. For this cause is it said in the Song of Songs, “I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?”1143 For one so speaks when he is constrained to come to Christ, and in coming has to bring his feet into contact with the ground. But again, there is another question that arises. Is not Christ above? hath He not ascended into heaven, and sitteth He not at the Father’s right hand? Does not the apostle expressly declare, “If ye, then, be risen with Christ, set your thoughts on those things which are above, where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Seek the things which are above, not things which are on earth?”1144 How is it, then, that to get to Christ we are compelled to tread the earth, since rather our hearts ought to be turned upwards toward the Lord, that we may be enabled to dwell in His presence? You see, brethren, the shortness of the time to-day curtails our consideration of this question. And if you perhaps fail in some measure to do so, yet I for my part see how much clearing up it requires. And therefore I beg of you to suffer it rather to be adjourned, than to be treated now in too negligent and restricted a manner; and your expectations will not be defrauded, but only deferred. For the Lord who thus makes us your debtors, will be present to enable us also to pay our debts.

In what way the Church should fear to defile her feet, while proceeding on her way to Christ.

1. I Have not been unmindful of my debt, and acknowledge that the time of payment has now come. May He give me wherewith to pay, as He gave me cause to incur the debt. For He has given me the love, of which it is said, “Owe no man anything, but to love one another.”1145 May He give also the word, which I feel myself owing to those I love. I put off your expectations till now for this reason, that I might explain as I could how it is we come to Christ along the ground, when we are commanded rather to seek the things which are above, not the things which are upon the earth.1146 For Christ is sitting above, at the right hand of the Father: but He is assuredly here also; and for that reason said also to Saul, as he was raging on the earth, “Why persecutest thou me?”1147 But the topic on which we were speaking, and which led to our entering on this inquiry, was our Lord’s washing His disciples’ feet, after the disciples themselves had already been washed, and needed not, save to wash their feet. And we there saw it to be understood that a man is indeed wholly washed in baptism; but while thereafter he liveth in this present world, and with the feet of his human passions treadeth on this earth, that is, in his life-intercourse with others, he contracts enough to call forth the prayer, “Forgive us our debts.”1148 And thus from these also is he cleansed by Him who washed His disciples’ feet,1149 and ceaseth not to make intercession for us.1150 And here occurred the words of the Church in the Song of Songs, when she saith, “I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” when she wished to go and open to that Being, fairer in form than the sons of men,1151 who had come to her and knocked, and asked her to open to Him. This gave rise to a question, which we were unwilling to compress into the narrow limits of the time, and therefore deferred till now, in what sense the Church, when on her way to Christ, may be afraid of defiling her feet, which she had washed in the baptism of Christ.

2. For thus she speaks: “I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my Beloved1152 that knocketh at the gate.” And then He also says: “Open to me, my sister, my nearest, my 1145 Rom. xiii. 8. 1146 Col. iii. 1, 2. 1147 Acts ix. 4. 1148 Matt. vi. 12. 1149 Chap. xiii. 5. 1150 Rom. viii. 34. 1151 Ps. xlv. 2. 1152 Patruelis, literally cousin (by the father’s side). dove, my perfect one; for my head is filled with dew, and my hair with the drops of the night.” And she replies: “I have put off my dress; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?”1153 O wonderful sacramental symbol! O lofty mystery! Does she, then, fear to defile her feet in coming to Him who washed the feet of His disciples? Her fear is genuine; for it is along the earth she has to come to Him, who is still on earth, because refusing to leave His own who are stationed here. Is it not He that saith, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”?1154 Is it not He that saith, “Ye shall see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man”?1155 If they ascend to Him because He is above, how do they descend to Him, but because He is also here? Therefore saith the Church: “I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” She says so even in the case of those who, purified from all dross, can say: “I desire to depart, and to be with Christ; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.”1156 She says it in those who preach Christ, and open to Him the door, that He may dwell by faith in the hearts of men.1157 In such she says it, when they deliberate whether to undertake such a ministry, for which they do not consider themselves qualified, so as to discharge it blamelessly, and so as not, after preaching to others, themselves to become castaways.1158 For it is safer to hear than to preach the truth: for in the hearing, humility is preserved; but when it is preached, it is scarcely possible for any man to hinder the entrance of some small measure of boasting, whereby the feet at least are defiled.

3. Therefore, as the Apostle James saith, “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak.”1159 As it is also said by another man of God, “Thou wilt make me to hear joy and gladness; and the bones Thou hast humbled will rejoice.”1160 This is what I said: When the truth is heard, humility is preserved. And another says: “But the friend of the bridegroom standeth and heareth him, and rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.”1161 Let us rejoice in the hearing that comes from the noiseless speaking of the truth within us. For although, when the sound is outwardly uttered, as by one that readeth; or proclaimeth, or preacheth, or disputeth, or commandeth, or comforteth, or exhorteth, or even by one that sings or accompanies his voice on an instrument, those who do so may fear to defile their 1153 Song of Sol. v. 2, 3. 1154 Matt. xxviii. 20. 1155 Chap. i. 51. 1156 Phil. i. 23, 24. 1157 Eph. iii. 17. 1158 1 Cor. ix. 27. 1159 Jas. i. 19. 1160 Ps. li. 8. 1161 Chap. iii. 29. feet, when they aim at pleasing men with the secretly active desire of human applause. Yet the one who hears such with a willing and pious mind, has no room for self-gratulation in the labors of others; and with no self-inflation, but with the joy of humility, rejoices because of the Master’s words of truth. Accordingly, in those who hear with willingness and humility, and spend a tranquil life in sweet and wholesome studies, the holy Church will take delight, and may say, “I sleep, and my heart waketh.” And what is this, “I sleep, and my heart waketh,” but just I sit down quietly to listen? My leisure is not laid out in nourishing slothfulness, but in acquiring wisdom. “I sleep, and my heart waketh.” I am still, and see that Thou art the Lord:1162 for “the wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise.”1163 “I sleep, and my heart waketh:” I rest from troublesome business, and my mind turns its attention to divine concerns (or communications). 1164

4. But while the Church finds delightful repose in those who thus sweetly and humbly sit at her feet, here is one who knocks, and says: “What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops.”1165 It is His voice, then, that knocks at the gate, and says: “Open to me, my sister, my neighbor, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” As if He had said, Thou art at leisure, and the door is closed against me: thou art caring for the leisure of the few, and through abounding iniquity the love of many is waxing cold.1166 The night He speaks of is iniquity: but His dew and drops are those who wax cold and fall away, and make the head of Christ to wax cold, that is, the love of God to fail. For the head of Christ is God.1167 But they are borne on His locks, that is, their presence is tolerated in the visible sacraments; while their senses never take hold of the internal realities. He knocks, therefore, to shake off this quiet from His inactive saints, and cries, “Open to me,” thou who, through my blood, art become “my sister;” through my drawing nigh, “my neighbor;” through my Spirit, “my dove;” through my word which thou hast fully learned in thy leisure, “my perfect one:” open to me, go and preach me to others. For how shall I get in to those who have shut their door against me, without some one to open? and how shall they hear without a preacher?1168

1. We have already, beloved, as the Lord was pleased to enable us, expounded to you those words of the Gospel, where the Lord, in washing His disciples’ feet, says, “He that is once washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.” Let us now look at what follows. “And ye,” He says, “are clean, but not all.” And to remove the need of inquiry on our part, the evangelist has himself explained its meaning, by adding: “For He knew who it was that should betray Him; therefore said He, Ye are not all clean.” Can anything be clearer? Let us therefore pass to what follows.

2. “So, after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?” Now it is that the blessed Peter gets that promise fulfilled: for he had been put off when, in the midst of his trembling and asserting, “Thou shalt never wash my feet,” he received the answer, “What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter” (vers. 7, 8). Here, then, is that very hereafter; it is now time to tell what was a little ago deferred. Accordingly, the Lord, mindful of His foregoing promise to make him understand an act of His so unexpected, so wonderful, so frightening, and, but for His own still more terrifying rejoinder, impossible to be permitted, that the Master not only of themselves, but of angels, and the Lord not only of them, but of all things, should wash the feet of His own disciples and servants: having then promised to let him know the meaning of so important an act, when He said, “Thou shalt know afterwards,” begins now to show them what it was that He did.

3. “Ye call me,” He says, “Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.” “Ye say well,” for ye only say the truth; I am indeed what ye say. There is a precept laid on man: “Let not thine own mouth praise thee, but the mouth of thy neighbor.”1172 For self-pleasing is a perilous thing for one who has to be on his guard against falling into pride. But He who is over all things, however much He commend Himself, cannot exalt Himself above His actual dignity: nor can God be rightly termed arrogant. For it is to our advantage to know Him, not to His; nor can any one know Him, unless that self-knowing One make Himself known. If He, then, by abstaining from self-commendation, wish, as it were, to avoid arrogance, He will deny us the power of knowing Him. And no one surely would blame Him for calling Himself Master, even though believing Him to be nothing more than a man; seeing He only makes profession of what even men themselves in the various arts profess to such an extent, without any charge of arrogance, that they are termed professors. But to call Himself also the Lord of His disciples,—of men who, in an earthly sense, were themselves also freeborn,— who would tolerate it in a man? But it is God that speaks. Here no elation is possible 1172 Prov. xxvii. 2. to loftiness so great, no lie to the truth: the profit is ours to be the subjects of such loftiness, the servants of the truth. That He calls Himself Lord is no imperfection on His side, but a benefit on ours. The words of a certain profane1173 author are commended, when he says, “All arrogance is hateful, and specially disagreeable is that of talent and eloquence;”1174 and yet, when the same person was speaking of his own eloquence, he said, “I would call it perfect, were I to pronounce judgment; nor, in truth, would I greatly fear the charge of arrogance.”1175 If, then, that most eloquent man had in truth no fear of being charged with arrogance, how can the truth itself have such a fear? Let Him call Himself Lord who is the Lord, let Him say what is true who is the Truth; so that I may not fail to learn that which is profitable, by His being silent about that which is. The most blessed Paul—certainly not himself the only-begotten Son of God, but the servant and apostle of that Son; not the Truth, but a partaker of the truth—declares with freedom and consistency, “And though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool; for I say the truth.”1176 For it would not be in himself, but in the truth, which is superior to himself, that he was glorying both humbly and truly: for it is he also who has given the charge, that he that glorieth should glory in the Lord.1177 Could thus the lover of wisdom have no fear of being chargeable with foolishness, though he desired to glory, and would wisdom itself, in its glorying, have any fear of such a charge? He had no fear of arrogance who said, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord;”1178 and could the power of the Lord have any such fear in commending itself, in which His servant’s soul is making her boast? “Ye call me,” He says, “Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.” Therefore ye say well, that I am so: for if I were not what ye say, ye would be wrong to say so, even with the purpose of praising me. How, then, could the Truth deny what the disciples of the Truth affirm? How could that which was said by the learners be denied by the very Truth that gave them their learning? How can the fountain deny what the drinker asserts? how can the light hide what the beholder declares?

4. “If I, then,” He says, “your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” This, blessed Peter, is what thou didst not know when thou wert not allowing it to be done. This is what He promised to let thee know afterwards, when thy Master and thy Lord terrified thee into submission, and washed thy feet. We have learned, brethren, humility from the Highest; let us, as humble, do to one another what He, the Highest, did in His hu- 1173 Sæcularis. 1174 Cicero, in Q. Cæcilium. 1175 Cicero, de Oratore. 1176 2 Cor. xii. 6. 1177 1 Cor. i. 31. 1178 Ps. xxxiv. 2. mility. Great is the commendation we have here of humility: and brethren do this to one another in turn, even in the visible act itself, when they treat one another with hospitality; for the practice of such humility is generally prevalent, and finds expression in the very deed that makes it discernible. And hence the apostle, when he would commend the well-deserving widow, says, “If she is hospitable, if she has washed the saints’ feet.”1179 And wherever such is not the practice among the saints, what they do not with the hand they do in heart, if they are of the number of those who are addressed in the hymn of the three blessed men, “O ye holy and humble of heart, bless ye the Lord.”1180 But it is far better, and beyond all dispute more accordant with the truth, that it should also be done with the hands; nor should the Christian think it beneath him to do what was done by Christ. For when the body is bent at a brother’s feet, the feeling of such humility is either awakened in the heart itself, or is strengthened if already present.

5. But apart from this moral understanding of the passage, we remember that the way in which we commended to your attention the grandeur of this act of the Lord’s, was that, in washing the feet of disciples who were already washed and clean, the Lord instituted a sign, to the end that, on account of the human feelings that occupy us on earth, however far we may have advanced in our apprehension of righteousness, we might know that we are not exempt from sin; which He thereafter washes away by interceding for us, when we pray the Father, who is in heaven, to forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.1181 What connection, then, can such an understanding of the passage have with that which He afterwards gave Himself, when He explained the reason of His act in the words, “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you”? Can we say that even a brother may cleanse a brother from the contracted stain of wrongdoing? Yea, verily, we know that of this also we were admonished in the profound significance of this work of the Lord’s, that we should confess our faults one to another, and pray for one another, even as Christ also maketh intercession for us.1182 Let us listen to the Apostle James, who states this precept with the greatest clearness when he says, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another.”1183 For of this also the Lord gave us the example. For if He who neither has, nor had, nor will have any sin, prays for our sins, how much more ought we to 1179 1 Tim. v. 10. 1180 Dan. iii. 88; that is, in the apocryphal piece called “The Song of the Three Children,” and which, as it has no place in the Hebrew Scriptures, is also omitted in our English version. Its place would fall between the 23d and 24th verses of chap. iii.—Tr. 1181 Matt. vi. 12. 1182 Rom. viii. 34. 1183 Jas. v. 16. pray for one another’s in turn! And if He forgives us, whom we have nothing to forgive; how much more ought we, who are unable to live here without sin, to forgive one another! For what else does the Lord apparently intimate in the profound significance of this sacramental sign, when He says, “For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you;” but what the apostle declares in the plainest terms, “Forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye”?1184 Let us therefore forgive one another his faults, and pray for one another’s faults, and thus in a manner be washing one another’s feet. It is our part, by His grace, to be supplying the service of love and humility: it is His to hear us, and to cleanse us from all the pollution of our sins through Christ, and in Christ; so that what we forgive even to others, that is, loose on earth, may be loosed in heaven.

1. We have just heard in the holy Gospel the Lord speaking, and saying, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord, nor the apostle [he that is sent] greater than he that sent him: if ye know these things, blessed shall ye be if ye do them.” He said this, therefore, because He had washed the disciples’ feet, as the Master of humility both by word and example. But we shall be able, with His help, to handle what is in need of more elaborate handling, if we linger not at what is perfectly clear. Accordingly, after uttering these words, the Lord added, “I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but, that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me, shall lift up his heel upon me.” And what is this, but that he shall trample upon me? We know of whom He speaks: it is Judas, that betrayer of His, who is referred to. He had not therefore chosen the person whom, by these words, He setteth utterly apart from His chosen ones. When I say then, He continues, “Blessed shall ye be if ye do them, I speak not of you all:” there is one among you who will not be blessed, and who will not do these things. “I know whom I have chosen.” Whom, but those who shall be blessed in the doing of what has been commanded and shown as needful to be done, by Him who alone can make them blessed? The traitor Judas, He says, is not one of those that have been chosen. What, then, is meant by what He says in another place, “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?”1185 Was it that he also was chosen for some purpose, for which he was really necessary; although not for the blessedness of which He has just been saying, “Blessed shall ye be if ye do these things”? He speaketh not so of them all; for He knows whom He has chosen to be associated with Himself in blessedness. Of such he is not one, who ate His bread in order that he might lift up his heel upon Him. The bread they ate was the Lord Himself; he ate the Lord’s bread in enmity to the Lord: they ate life, and he punishment. “For he that eateth unworthily,” says the apostle, “eateth judgment unto himself.”1186 “From this time,”1187 Christ adds, “I tell you before it come; that when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He:” that is, I am He of whom the Scripture that preceded has just said, “He that eateth bread with me, shall lift up his heel upon me.”

2. He then proceeds to say: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent me.” Did He mean us to understand that there is as little distance between one sent by Him, and Himself, as there is between Himself and God the Father? If we take it in this way, I know not what 1185 Chap. vi. 70. 1186 1 Cor. xi. 29. 1187 A modo; Greek, ’Απ’ ἄρτι; margin of English Bible, “From henceforth.”—Tr. measurements of distance (which may God forbid!) we shall be adopting, in the Arian fashion. For they, when they hear or read these words of the Gospel, have immediate recourse to their dogmatic measurements, whereby they ascend not to life, but fall headlong into death. For they straightway say: The Son’s messenger stands at the same relative distance from the Son, as expressed in the words, “He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me,” as that in which the Son Himself stands from the Father, when He said, “He that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent me.” But if thou sayest so, thou forgettest, heretic, thy measurements. For if, because of these words of the Lord, thou puttest the Son at as great a distance from the Father as the messenger apostle from the Son, where dost thou purpose to place the Holy Spirit? Has it escaped thee, that ye are wont to place Him after the Son? He will therefore come in between the messenger and the Son; and much greater, then, will be the distance between the Son and His messenger, than between the Father and His Son. Or perhaps, to preserve that distinction between the Son and His messenger, and between the Father and His Son, at their equality of distance, will the Holy Spirit be equal to the Son? But as little will ye allow this. And where, then, do ye think of placing Him, if ye place the Son as far beneath the Father, as ye place the messenger beneath the Son? Restrain, therefore, your foolhardy presumption; and do not be seeking to find in these words the same distance between the Son and His messenger as between the Father and His Son. But listen rather to the Son Himself, when He says, “I and my Father are one.”1188 For there the Truth hath left you no shadow of distance between the Begetter and the Only-begotten; there Christ Himself hath erased your measurements, and the rock hath broken your staircase to pieces.

3. But now that the heretical slander has been disposed of, in what sense are we to understand these words of the Lord: “He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent me”? For if we were inclined to understand the words, “He that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent me,” as expressing the oneness in nature of the Father and the Son; the sequence from the similar arrangement of words in the other clause, “He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me,” would be the unity in nature of the Son and His messenger. And there might, indeed, be no impropriety in so understanding it, seeing that a twofold substance belongeth to the strong man, who hath rejoiced to run the race;1189 for the Word was made flesh,1190 that is, God became man. And accordingly He might be supposed to have said, “He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me,” with reference to His human nature; “and he that receiveth me” as God, “receiveth Him that sent me.” But in so speaking, He was not commending the unity of nature, but the authority of the Sender in Him who is sent. Let every one, therefore, so receive 1188 Chap. x. 30. 1189 Ps. xix. 5. 1190 Chap. i. 14. Him that is sent, that in His person he may give heed to Him who sent Him. If, then, thou lookest for Christ in Peter, thou wilt find the disciple’s instructor; and if thou lookest for the Father in the Son, thou wilt find the Begetter of the Only-begotten: and so in Him who is sent, thou art not mistaken in receiving the Sender. What follows in the Gospel cannot be compressed within the shortness of the time remaining. And therefore, dearly beloved, let what has been said, if thought sufficient, be received in a healthful way, as pasture for the holy sheep; and if it is somewhat scanty, let it be ruminated over with ardent desire for more.

1. It is no light question, brethren, that meets us in the Gospel of the blessed John, when he says: “When Jesus had thus said, He was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” Was it for this reason that Jesus was troubled, not in flesh, but in spirit, that He was now about to say, “One of you shall betray me”? Did this occur then for the first time to His mind, or was it at that moment suddenly revealed to Him for the first time, and so troubled Him by the startling novelty of so great a calamity? Was it not a little before that He was using these words, “He that eateth bread with me will lift up his heel against me”? And had He not also, previously to that, said, “And ye are clean, but not all”? where the evangelist added, “For He knew who should betray Him:”1191 to whom also on a still earlier occasion He had pointed in the words, “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?”1192 Why is it, then, that He “was now troubled in spirit,” when “He testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me”? Was it because now He had so to mark him out, that he should no longer remain concealed among the rest, but be separated from the others, that therefore “He was troubled in spirit”? Or was it because now the traitor himself was on the eve of departing to bring those Jews to whom he was to betray the Lord, that He was troubled by the imminency of His passion, the closeness of the danger, and the swooping hand of the traitor, whose resolution was foreknown? For some such cause it certainly was that Jesus “was troubled in spirit,” as when He said, “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour.”1193 And accordingly, just as then His soul was troubled as the hour of His passion approached; so now also, as Judas was on the point of going and coming, and the atrocious villainy of the traitor neared its accomplishment, “He was troubled in spirit.”

2. He was troubled, then, who had power to lay down His life, and had power to take it again.1194 That mighty power is troubled, the firmness of the rock is disturbed: or is it rather our infirmity that is troubled in Him? Assuredly so: let servants believe nothing unworthy of their Lord, but recognize their own membership in their Head. He who died for us, was also Himself troubled in our place. He, therefore, who died in power, was troubled in the midst of His power: He who shall yet transform1195 the body of our humility into similarity 1191 Chap. xiii. 18, 10, 11. 1192 Chap. vi. 71. 1193 Chap. xii. 27. 1194 Chap. x. 18. 1195 Phil. iii. 21. The text has transfiguravit (pret.), “hath transformed,” in this as well as in the next clause, “hath transferred,” but here it is evidently a misprint for transfigurabit (fut.).—Tr. of form with the body of His glory, hath also transferred into Himself the feeling of our infirmity, and sympathizeth with us in the feelings of His own soul. Accordingly, when it is the great, the brave, the sure, the invincible One that is troubled, let us have no fear for Him, as if He were capable of failing: He is not perishing, but in search of us [who are]. Us, I say; it is us exclusively whom He is thus seeking, that in His trouble we may behold ourselves, and so, when trouble reaches us, may not fall into despair and perish. By His trouble, who could not be troubled save with His own consent, He comforts such as are troubled unwillingly.

3. Away with the reasons of philosophers, who assert that a wise man is not affected by mental perturbations. God hath made foolish the wisdom of this world;1196 and the Lord knoweth the thoughts of men, that they are vain.1197 It is plain that the mind of the Christian may be troubled, not by misery, but by pity: he may fear lest men should be lost to Christ; he may sorrow when one is being lost; he may have ardent desire to gain men to Christ; he may be filled with joy when such is being done; he may have fear of falling away himself from Christ; he may sorrow over his own estrangement from Christ; he may be earnestly desirous of reigning with Christ, and he may be rejoicing in the hope that such fellowship with Christ will yet be his lot. These are certainly four of what they call perturbations—fear and sorrow, love and gladness. And Christian minds may have sufficient cause to feel them, and evidence their dissent from the error of Stoic philosophers, and all resembling them: who indeed, just as they esteem truth to be vanity, regard also insensibility as soundness; not knowing that a man’s mind, like the limbs of his body, is only the more hopelessly diseased when it has lost even the feeling of pain.

4. But says some one: Ought the mind of the Christian to be troubled even at the prospect of death? For what comes of those words of the apostle, that he had a desire to depart, and to be with Christ,1198 if the object of his desire can thus trouble him when it comes? Our answer to this would be easy, indeed, in the case of those who also term gladness itself a perturbation [of the mind]. For what if the trouble he thus feels arises entirely from his rejoicing at the prospect of death? But such a feeling, they say, ought to be termed gladness, and not rejoicing.1199 And what is that, but just to alter the name, while the feeling experienced is the same? But let us for our part confine our attention to the Sacred Scriptures, and with the Lord’s help seek rather such a solution of this question as will be in harmony with them; and then, seeing it is written, “When He had thus said, He was troubled in spirit,” we will not say that it was joy that disturbed Him; lest His own words should convince us of 1196 1 Cor. i. 20. 1197 Ps. xciv. 11. 1198 Phil. i. 23. 1199 Gaudium, non lætitia. the contrary when He says, “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death.”1200 It is some such feeling that is here also to be understood, when, as His betrayer was now on the very point of departing alone, and straightway returning along with his associates, “Jesus was troubled in spirit.”

5. Strong-minded, indeed, are those Christians, if such there are, who experience no trouble at all in the prospect of death; but for all that, are they stronger-minded than Christ? Who would have the madness to say so? And what else, then, does His being troubled signify, but that, by voluntarily assuming the likeness of their weakness, He comforted the weak members in His own body, that is, in His Church; to the end that, if any of His own are still troubled at the approach of death, they may fix their gaze upon Him, and so be kept from thinking themselves castaways on this account, and being swallowed up in the more grievous death of despair? And how great, then, must be that good which we ought to expect and hope for in the participation of His divine nature, whose very perturbation tranquillizes us, and whose infirmity confirms us? Whether, therefore, on this occasion it was by His pity for Judas himself thus rushing into ruin, or by the near approach of His own death, that He was troubled, yet there is no possibility of doubting that it was not through any infirmity of mind, but in the fullness of power, that He was troubled, and so no despair of salvation need arise in our minds, when we are troubled, not in the possession of power, but in the midst of our weakness. He certainly bore the infirmity of the flesh,—an infirmity which was swallowed up in His resurrection. But He who was not only man, but God also, surpassed by an ineffable distance the whole human race in fortitude of mind. He was not, then, troubled by any outward plessure of man, but troubled Himself; which was very plainly declared of Him when He raised Lazarus from the dead: for it is there written that He troubled Himself,1201 that it may be so understood even where the text does not so express it, and yet declares that He was troubled. For having by His power assumed our full humanity, by that very power He awoke in Himself our human feelings whenever He judged it becoming.

1. This short section of the Gospel, brethren, we have in this lesson brought forward for exposition, as thinking that we ought also to say something of the Lord’s betrayer, as now plainly enough disclosed by the dipping and holding out to him of the piece of bread. Of that indeed which precedes, (namely), that Jesus, when about to point him out, was troubled in spirit, we have treated in our last discourse; but what I perhaps omitted to mention there, the Lord, by His own perturbation of spirit, thought proper to indicate this also, that it is necessary to bear with false brethren, and those tares that are among the wheat in the Lord’s field until harvest-time, because that when we are compelled by urgent reasons to separate some of them even before the harvest, it cannot be done without disturbance to the Church. Such disturbance to His saints in the future, through schismatics and heretics, the Lord in a way foretold and prefigured in Himself, when, at the moment of that wicked man Judas’ departure, and of his thereby bringing to an end, in a very open and decided way, his past intermingling with the wheat, in which he had long been tolerated, He was troubled, not in body, but in spirit. For it is not spitefulness, but charity, that troubles His spiritual members in scandals of this kind; lest perchance, in separating some of the tares, any of the wheat should also be uprooted therewith.

2. “Jesus,” therefore, “was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said: Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” “One of you,” in number, not in merit; in appearance, not in reality; in bodily commingling, not by any spiritual tie; a companion by fleshly juxtaposition, not in any unity of the heart; and therefore not one who is of you, but one who is to go forth from you. For how else can this “one of you” be true, of which the Lord so testified, and said, if that is true which the writer of this very Gospel says in his Epistle, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us”?1202 Judas, therefore was not of them; for, had he been of them, he would have continued with them. What, then, do the words “One of you shall betray me” mean, but that one is going out from you who shall betray me? Just as he also, who said, “If they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us,” had said before, “They went out from us.” And thus it is true in both senses, “of us,” and “not of us;” in one respect “of us,” and in another “not of us;” “of us” in respect to sacramental communion, but “not of us” in respect to the criminal conduct that belongs exclusively to themselves.

3. “Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom He spake.” For while they were imbued with a reverential love to their Master, they were none the less affected by human infirmity in their feelings towards each other. Each one’s own conscience was 1202 1 John ii. 19. known to himself; but as he was ignorant of his neighbor’s, each one’s self-assurance was such that each was uncertain of all the others, and all the others were uncertain of that one.

4. “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom, one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.” What he meant by saying “in His bosom,” he tells us a little further on, where he says, “on the breast of Jesus.” It was that very John whose Gospel is before us, as he afterwards expressly declares.1203 For it was a custom with those who have supplied us with the sacred writings, that when any of them was relating the divine history, and came to something affecting himself, he spoke as if it were about another; and gave himself a place in the line of his narrative becoming one who was the recorder of public events, and not as one who made himself the subject of his preaching. Saint Matthew acted also in this way, when, in coming in the course of his narrative to himself, he says, “He saw a publican named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, and saith unto him, Follow me.”1204 He does not say, He saw me, and said to me. So also acted the blessed Moses, writing all the history about himself as if it concerned another, and saying, “The Lord said unto Moses.”1205 Less habitually was this done by the Apostle Paul, not however in any history which undertakes to explain the course of public events, but in his own epistles. At all events, he speaks thus of himself: “I knew a man in Christ fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up into the third heaven.”1206 And so, when the blessed evangelist also says here, not, I was leaning on Jesus’ bosom, but, “There was leaning one of the disciples,” let us recognize a custom of our author’s, rather than fall into any wonder on the subject. For what loss is there to the truth, when the facts themselves are told us, and all boastfulness of language is in a measure avoided? For thus at least did he relate that which most signally pertained to his praise.

5. But what mean the words, “whom Jesus loved”? As if He did not love the others, of whom this same John has said above, “He loved them to the end” (ver. 1); and as the Lord Himself, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And who could enumerate all the testimonies of the sacred pages, in which the Lord Jesus is exhibited as the lover, not only of this one, or of those who were then around Him, but of such also as were to be His members in the distant future, and of His universal Church? But there is some truth, doubtless, underlying these words, and having reference to the 1203 Chap. xxi. 20–24. 1204 Matt. ix. 9. 1205 Ex. vi. 1. 1206 2 Cor. xii. 2. bosom on which the narrator was leaning. For what else can be in dicated by the bosom but some hidden truth? But there is another more suitable passage, where the Lord may enable us to say something about this secret that may prove sufficient.

6. “Simon Peter therefore beckons, and says to him.”1207 The expression is noteworthy, as indicating that something was said not by any sound of words, but by merely beckoning with the head. “He beckons, and says;” that is, his beckoning is his speech. For if one is said to speak in his thoughts, as Scripture saith, “They said [reasoned] with themselves;”1208 how much more may he do so by beckoning, which expresses outwardly by some sort of signs what had previously been conceived within! What, then, did his beckoning mean? What else but that which follows? “Who is it of whom He speaks?” Such was the language of Peter’s beckoning; for it was by no vocal sounds, but by bodily gestures, that he spake. “He then, having leaned back on Jesus’ breast,”—surely the very bosom1209 of His breast this, the secret place of wisdom!—“saith unto Him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, He it is to whom I shall give a piece of bread, when I have dipped it. And when He had dipped the bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the bread, Satan entered into him.” The traitor was disclosed, the coverts of darkness were revealed. What he got was good, but to his own hurt he received it, because, evil himself, in an evil spirit he received what was good. But we have much to say about that dipped bread which was presented to the false-hearted disciple, and about that which follows; and for these we shall require more time than remains to us now at the close of this discourse.

1. I Know, dearly beloved, that some may be moved, as the godly to inquire into the meaning of, and the ungodly to find fault with, the statement, that it was after the Lord had given the bread, that had been dipped, to His betrayer that Satan entered into him. For so it is written: “And when He had dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the Son of Simon. And after the bread, then entered Satan into him.” For they say, Was this the worth of Christ’s bread, given from Christ’s own table, that after it Satan should enter into His disciple? And the answer we give them is, that thereby we are taught rather how much we need to beware of receiving what is good in a sinful spirit. For the point of special importance is, not the thing that is received, but the person that receives it; and not the character of the thing that is given, but of him to whom it is given. For even good things are hurtful, and evil things are beneficial, according to the character of the recipients. “Sin,” says the apostle, “that it might appear sin, wrought death to me by that which is good.”1210 Thus, you see, evil is brought about by the good, so long as that which is good is wrongly received. It is he also that says: “Lest I should be exalted unduly through the greatness of my revelations, there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me. For which thing I besought the Lord thrice, that He would take it away from me; and He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for strength is made perfect in weakness.” 1211 And here, you see, good was brought about by that which was evil, when the evil was received in a good spirit. Why, then, do we wonder if Christ’s bread was given to Judas, that thereby he should be made over to the devil; when we see, on the other hand, that Paul was visited by a mes- senger of the devil, that by such an instrumentality he might be perfected in Christ? In this way, both the good was injurious to the evil man, and the evil was beneficial to the good. Bear in mind the meaning of the Scripture, “Whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”1212 And when the apostle said this, he was dealing with those who were taking the body of the Lord, like any other food, in an undiscerning and careless spirit. If, then, he is thus taken to task who does not discern, that is, does not distinguish from the other kinds of food, the body of the Lord, what condemnation must be his, who in the guise of a friend comes as an enemy to His table! If negligence in the guest is thus visited with blame, what must be the punishment that will fall on the man that sells the very person who has invited him to his table! And why 1210 Rom. vii. 13. 1211 2 Cor. xii. 7–9. 1212 1 Cor. xi. 27. was the bread given to the traitor, but as an evidence of the grace he had treated with ingratitude?

2. It was after this bread, then, that Satan entered into the Lord’s betrayer, that, as now given over to his power, he might take full possession of one into whom before this he had only entered in order to lead him into error. For we are not to suppose that he was not in him when he went to the Jews and bargained about the price of betraying the Lord; for the evangelist Luke very plainly attests this when he says: “Then entered Satan into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, being one of the twelve; and he went his way, and communed with the chief priests.”1213 Here, you see, it is shown that Satan had already entered into Judas. His first entrance, therefore, was when he implanted in his heart the thought of betraying Christ; for in such a spirit had he already come to the supper. But now, after the bread, he entered into him, no longer to tempt one who belonged to another, but to take possession of him as his own.

3. But it was not then, as some thoughtless readers suppose, that Judas received the body of Christ. For we are to understand that the Lord had already dispensed to all of them the sacrament of His body and blood, when Judas also was present, as very clearly related by Saint Luke;1214 and it was after this that we come to the moment when, in accordance with John’s account, the Lord made a full disclosure of His betrayer by dipping and holding out to him the morsel of bread, and intimating perhaps by the dipping of the bread the false pretensions of the other. For the dipping of a thing does not always imply its washing; but some things are dipped in order to be dyed. But if a good meaning is to be here attached to the dipping, his ingratitude for that good was deservedly followed by damnation.

4. But still, possessed as Judas now was, not by the Lord, but by the devil, and now that the bread had entered the belly, and an enemy the soul of this man of ingratitude: still, I say, there was this enormous wickedness, already conceived in his heart, waiting to be wrought out to its full issue, for which the damnable desire had always preceded. Accordingly, when the Lord, the living Bread, had given this bread to the dead, and in giving it had revealed the betrayer of the Bread, He said, “What thou doest, do quickly.” He did not command the crime, but foretold evil to Judas, and good to us. For what could be worse for Judas, or what could be better for us, than the delivering up of Christ,—a deed done by him to his own destruction, but done, apart from him, in our behalf? “What thou doest, do quickly.” Oh that word of One whose wish was to be ready rather than to be angry! That word! expressing not so much the punishment of the traitor as the reward awaiting the Redeemer! For He said, “What thou doest, do quickly,” not as wrathfully looking to the destruction of the trustbetrayer, but in His own haste to accomplish the salvation of the faithful; for He was delivered 1213 Luke xxii. 3, 4. 1214 Luke xxii. 19–21. for our offences,1215 and He loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.1216 And as the apostle also says of himself: “Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”1217 Had not, then, Christ given Himself, no one could have given Him up. What is there in Judas’ conduct but sin? For in delivering up Christ he had no thought of our salvation, for which Christ was really delivered, but thought only of his money gain, and found the loss of his soul. He got the wages he wished, but had also given him, against his wish, the wages he merited. Judas delivered up Christ, Christ delivered Himself up: the former transacted the business of his own selling of his Master, the latter the business of our redemption. “What thou doest, do quickly,” not because thou hast the power in thyself, but because He wills it who has all the power.

5. “Now no one of those at the table knew for what intent He spake this unto him. For some of them thought, because Judas had the money-bag, that Jesus said unto him, Buy those things which we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.” The Lord, therefore, had also a money-box, where He kept the offerings of believers, and distributed to the necessities of His own, and to others who were in need. It was then that the custom of having church-money was first introduced, so that thereby we might understand that His precept about taking no thought for the morrow1218 was not a command that no money should be kept by His saints, but that God should not be served for any such end, and that the doing of what is right should not be held in abeyance through the fear of want. For the apostle also has this foresight for the future, when he says: “If any believer hath widows, let him give them enough, that the church may not be burdened, that it may have enough for them that are widows indeed.”1219

6. “He then, having received the morsel of bread, went immediately out: and it was night.” And he that went out was himself the night. “Therefore when” the night “was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified.” The day therefore uttered speech unto the day, that is, Christ did so to His faithful disciples, that they might hear and love Him as His followers; and the night showed knowledge unto the night,1220 that is, Judas did so to the unbelieving Jews, that they might come as His persecutors, and make Him their prisoner. But now, in considering these words of the Lord, which were addressed to the godly, before His arrest by the ungodly, special attention on the part of the hearer is required; and therefore 1215 Rom. iv. 25. 1216 Eph. v. 25. 1217 Gal. ii. 20. 1218 Matt. vi. 34. 1219 1 Tim. v. 16. 1220 Ps. xix. 2. it will be more becoming in the preacher, instead of hurriedly considering them now, to defer them till a future occasion.

1. Let us give our mind’s best attention, and, with the Lord’s help, seek after God. The language of the divine hymn is: “Seek God and your soul shall live.”1221 Let us search for that which needs to be discovered, and into that which has been discovered. He whom we need to discover is concealed, in order to be sought after; and when found, is infinite, in order still to be the object of our search. Hence it is elsewhere said, “Seek His face evermore.” 1222 For He satisfies the seeker to the utmost of his capacity; and makes the finder still more capable, that he may seek to be filled anew, according to the growth of his ability to receive. Therefore it was not said, “Seek His face evermore,” in the same sense as of certain others, who are “always learning, and never coming to a knowledge of the truth;”1223 but rather as the preacher saith, “When a man hath finished, then he beginneth;”1224 till we reach that life where we shall be so filled, that our natures shall attain their utmost capacity, because we shall have arrived at perfection, and no longer be aiming at more. For then all that can satisfy us will be revealed to our eyes. But here let us always be seeking, and let our reward in finding put no end to our searching. For we do not say that it will not be so always, because it is only so here; but that here we must always be seeking, lest at any time we should imagine that here we can ever cease from seeking. For those of whom it is said that they are “always learning, and never coming to a knowledge of the truth,” are here indeed always learning; but when they depart this life they will no longer be learning, but receiving the reward of their error. For the words, “always learning, and never coming to a knowledge of the truth,” mean, as it were, always walking, and never getting into the road. Let us, on the other hand, be walking always in the way, till we reach the end to which it leads; let us nowhere tarry in it till we reach the proper place of abode: and so we shall both persevere in our seeking, and be making some attainments in our finding, and, thus seeking and finding, be passing on to that which remains, till the very end of all seeking shall be reached in that world where perfection shall admit of no further effort at advancement. Let these prefatory remarks, dearly beloved, make your Charity attentive to this discourse of our Lord’s, which He addressed to the disciples before His passion: for it is profound in it self; and where, in particular, the preacher purposes to expend much labor, the hearer ought not to be remiss in attention.

1. It becomes us, dearly beloved, to keep in view the orderly connection of our Lord’s words. For after having previously said, but subsequently to Judas’ departure, and his separation from even the outward communion of the saints, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him;”—whether He said so as pointing to His future kingdom, when the wicked shall be separated from the good, or that His resurrection was then to take place, that is, was not to be delayed, like ours, till the end of the world;—and having then added, “If God is glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him,” whereby without any ambiguity He testified to the immediate fulfillment of His own resurrection; He proceeded to say, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you.” To keep them, therefore, from thinking that God was to glorify Him in such a way that He would never again be joined with them in earthly intercourse, He said, “Yet a little while I am with you:” as if He had said, Straightway indeed I shall be glorified in my resurrection; and yet I am not straightway to ascend into heaven, but “yet a little while I am with you.” For, as we find it written in the Acts of the Apostles, He spent forty days with them after His resurrection, going in and out, and eating and drinking:1229 not indeed that He had any experience of hunger and thirst, but even by such evidences confirmed the reality of His flesh, which no longer needed, but still possessed the power, to eat and to drink. Was it, then, these forty days He had in view when He said, “Yet a little while I am with you,” or something else? For it may also be understood in this way: “Yet a little while I am with you;” still, like you, I also am in this state of fleshly infirmity, that is, till He should die and rise again: for after He rose again He was with them, as has been said, for forty days in the full manifestation of His bodily presence; but He was no longer with them in the fellowship of human infirmity.

2. There is also another form of His divine presence unknown to mortal senses, of which He likewise says, “Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.”1230 This, at least, is not the same as “yet a little while I am with you;” for it is not a little while until the end of the world. Or if even this is so (for time flies, and a thousand years are in God’s sight as one day, or as a watch in the night,)1231 yet we cannot believe that He intended any such meaning on this occasion, especially as He went on to say, “Ye shall seek me, and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come.” That is to say, after this little while that I am with you, “ye shall seek me, and whither I go, ye cannot come.” Is it after the end of the 1229 Acts i. 3. 1230 Matt. xxviii. 20. 1231 Ps. xc. 4. world that, whither He goes, they will not be able to come? And where, then, is the place of which He is going to say a little after in this same discourse, “Father, I will that they also be with me where I am”?1232 It was not then of that presence of His with His own which He is maintaining with them till the end of the world that He now spake, when He said, “Yet a little while I am with you;” but either of that state of mortal infirmity in which He dwelt with them till His passion, or of that bodily presence which He was to maintain with them up till His ascension. Whichever of these any one prefers, he can do so without being at variance with the faith.

3. That no one, however, may deem that sense inconsistent with the true one, in which we say that the Lord may have meant the communion of mortal flesh which He held with the disciples till His passion, when He said, “Yet a little while I am with you;” let those words also of His after His resurrection, as found in another evangelist, be taken into consideration, when He said, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you:” 1233 as if then He was no longer with them, even at the very time that they were standing by, seeing, touching, and talking with Him. What does He mean, then, by saying, “while I was yet with you,” but, while I was yet in that state of mortal flesh wherein ye still remain? For then, indeed, He had been raised again in the same flesh; but He was no longer associated with them in the same mortality. And accordingly, as on that occasion, when now clothed in fleshly immortality, He said with truth, “while I was yet with you,” to which we can attach no other meaning than, while I was yet with you in fleshly mortality; so here also, without any absurdity, we may understand His words, “Yet a little while I am with you,” as if He had said, Yet a little while I am mortal like yourselves. Let us look, then, at the words that follow.

4. “Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so say I to you now.” That is, ye cannot come now. But when He said so to the Jews, He did not add the “now.”1234 The former, therefore, were not able at that time to come where He was going, but they were so afterwards; because He says so a little afterwards in the plainest terms to the Apostle Peter. For, on the latter inquiring, “Lord, whither goest Thou?” He replied to him, “Whither I go thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards” (ver. 36). But what it means is not to be carelessly passed over. For whither was it that the disciples could not then follow the Lord, but were able afterwards? If we say, to death, what time can be discovered when any one of the sons of men will find it impossible to die; since such, in this perishable body, is the lot of man, that therein life is not a whit 1232 Chap. xvii. 24. 1233 Luke xxiv. 44. 1234 Scarcely an admissible use of the “now” (ἄρτι), which manifestly refers to the time of Jesus saying so to the disciples, and not to the period of their inability to come.—Tr. easier than death? They were not, therefore, at that time less able to follow the Lord to death, but they were less able to follow Him to the life which is deathless. For thither it was the Lord was going, that, rising from the dead, He should die no more, and death should no more have dominion over Him.1235 For as the Lord was about to die for righteousness’ sake, how could they have followed Him now, who were as yet unripe for the ordeal of martyrdom? Or, with the Lord about to enter the fleshly immortality, how could they have followed Him now, when, even though ready to die, they would have no resurrection till the end of the world? Or, on the point of going, as the Lord was, to the bosom of the Father, and that without any forsaking of them, just as He had never quitted that bosom in coming to them, how could they have followed Him now, since no one can enter on that state of felicity but he that is made perfect in love? And to show them, therefore, how it is that they may attain the fitness to proceed, where He was going before them, He says, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another” (ver. 34). These are the steps whereby Christ must be followed; but any fuller discourse thereon must be put off till another opportunity.

1. The Lord Jesus declares that He is giving His disciples a new commandment, that they should love one another. “A new commandment,” He says, “I give unto you, that ye love one another.” But was not this already commanded in the ancient law of God, where it is written, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”?1236 Why, then, is it called a new one by the Lord, when it is proved to be so old? Is it on this account a new commandment, because He hath divested us of the old, and clothed us with the new man? For it is not indeed every kind of love that renews him that listens to it, or rather yields it obedience, but that love regarding which the Lord, in order to distinguish it from all carnal affection, added, “as I have loved you.” For husbands and wives love one another, and parents and children, and all other human relationships that bind men together: to say nothing of the blame- worthy and damnable love which is mutually felt by adulterers and adulteresses, by fornicators and prostitutes, and all others who are knit together by no human relationship, but by the mischievous depravity of human life. Christ, therefore, hath given us a new commandment, that we should love one another, as He also hath loved us. This is the love that renews us, making us new men, heirs of the New Testament, singers of the new song. It was this love, brethren beloved, that renewed also those of olden time, who were then the righteous, the patriarchs and prophets, as it did afterwards the blessed apostles: it is it, too, that is now renewing the nations, and from among the universal race of man, which overspreads the whole world, is making and gathering together a new people, the body of the newly-married spouse of the only-begotten Son of God, of whom it is said in the Song of Songs, “Who is she that ascendeth, made white?”1237 Made white indeed, because renewed; and how, but by the new commandment? Because of this, the members thereof have a mutual interest in one another; and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; and one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.1238 For this they hear and observe, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another:” not as those love one another who are corrupters, nor as men love one another in a human way; but they love one another as 1236 Lev. xix. 18. 1237 Song of Sol. viii. 5, where Augustin, in dealbata, follows the Septuagint in their misreading and alteration of the original םִן־הַמִּדְבָּר , “from the wilderness” (as in chap. iii. 6), into מִחְלַבֶּנֶח, מִחְבָּרֶרֶח , or some such participle. The Vulgate differs from Augustin, and reads correctly, de deserto, but interposes between this and the next clause another participial expression, deliciis affuens, abounding in delights. Our English version follows the original.—Tr. 1238 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26. those who are God’s, and all of them sons of the Highest, and brethren, therefore, of His only Son, with that mutual love wherewith He loved them, when about to lead them on to the goal where all sufficiency should be theirs, and where their every desire should be satisfied with good things.1239 For then there will be nothing wanting they can desire, when God will be all in all.1240 An end like that has no end. No one dieth there, where no one arriveth save he that dieth to this world, not that universal kind of death whereby the body is bereft of the soul; but the death of the elect, through which, even while still remaining in this mortal flesh, the heart is set on the things which are above. Of such a death it is that the apostle said, “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”1241 And perhaps to this, also, do the words refer, “Love is strong as death.”1242 For by this love it is brought about, that, while still held in the present corruptible body, we die to this world, and our life is hid with Christ in God; yea, that love itself is our death to the world, and our life with God. For if that is death when the soul quits the body, how can it be other than death when our love quits the world? Such love, therefore, is strong as death. And what is stronger than that which bindeth the world?

2. Think not then, my brethren, that when the Lord says, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another,” there is any overlooking of that greater commandment, which requires us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind; for along with this seeming oversight, the words “that ye love one another” appear also as if they had no reference to that second commandment, which says, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” For “on these two commandments,” He says, “hang all the law and the prophets.”1243 But both commandments may be found in each of these by those who have good understanding. For, on the one hand, he that loveth God cannot despise His commandment to love his neighbor; and on the other, he who in a holy and spiritual way loveth his neighbor, what doth he love in him but God? That is the love, distinguished from all mundane love, which the Lord specially characterized, when He added, “as I have loved you.” For what was it but God that He loved in us? Not because we had Him, but in order that we might have Him; and that He may lead us on, as I said a little ago, where God is all in all. It is in this way, also, that the physician is properly said to love the sick; and what is it he loves in them but their health, which at all events he desires to recall; not their sickness, which he comes to remove? Let us, then, also so love one another, that, as far as possible, we may by the solicitude of our love be winning one another to have God within us. And 1239 Ps. ciii. 5. 1240 1 Cor. xv. 28. 1241 Col. iii. 3. 1242 Song of Sol. viii. 6. 1243 Matt. xxii. 37–40. this love is bestowed on us by Him who said, “As I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” For this very end, therefore, did He love us, that we also should love one another; bestowing this on us by His own love to us, that we should be bound to one another in mutual love, and, united together as members by so pleasant a bond, should be the body of so mighty a Head.

3. “By this,” He adds, “Shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another:” as if He said, Other gifts of mine are possessed in common with you by those who are not mine,—not only nature, life, perception, reason, and that safety which is equally the privilege of men and beasts; but also languages, sacraments, prophecy, knowledge, faith, the bestowing of their goods upon the poor, and the giving of their body to the flames: but because destitute of charity, they only tinkle like cymbals; they are nothing, and by nothing are they profited.1244 It is not, then, by such gifts of mine, however good, which may be alike possessed by those who are not my disciples, but “by this it is that all men shall know that ye are my disciples, that ye have love one to another.” O thou spouse of Christ, fair amongst women! O thou who ascendest in whiteness, leaning upon thy Beloved! for by His light thou art made dazzling to whiteness, by His assistance thou art preserved from falling. How well becoming thee are the words in that Song of Songs, which is, as it were, thy bridal chant, “That there is love in thy delights”!1245 This it is that suffers not thy soul to perish with the ungodly; it is this that judges thy cause, and is strong as death, and is present in thy delights. How wonderful is the character of that death, which was all but swallowed up in penal sufferings, had it not been over and above absorbed in delights! But here this discourse must now be closed; for we must make a new commencement in dealing with the words that follow.

1. While the Lord Jesus was commending to the disciples that holy love wherewith they should love one another, “Simon Peter saith unto Him, Lord, whither goest Thou?” So, at all events, said the disciple to his Master, the servant to his Lord, as one who was prepared to follow. Just as for the same reason the Lord, who read in his mind the purpose of such a question, made him this reply: “Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now;” as if He said, In reference to the object of thy asking, thou canst not now. He does not say, Thou canst not; but “Thou canst not now.” He intimated delay, without depriving of hope; and that same hope, which He took not away, but rather bestowed, in His next words He confirmed, by proceeding to say, “Thou shalt follow me afterwards.” Why such haste, Peter? The Rock (petra) has not yet solidified thee by His Spirit. Be not lifted up with presumption, “Thou canst not now;” be not cast now into despair, “Thou shalt follow afterwards.” But what does he say to this? “Why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake.” He saw what was the kind of desire in his mind; but what the measure of his strength, he saw not. The weak man boasted of his willingness, but the Physician had an eye on the state of his health; the one promised, the Other foreknew: the ignorant was bold; He that foreknew all, condescended to teach. How much had Peter taken upon himself, by looking only at what he wished, and having no knowledge of what he was able! How much had he taken upon himself, that, when the Lord had come to lay down His life for His friends, and so for him also, he should have the assurance to offer to do the same for the Lord; and while as yet Christ’s life was not laid down for himself, he should promise to lay down his own life for Christ! “Jesus” therefore “answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?” Wilt thou do for me what I have not yet done for thee? “Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?” Canst thou go before, who art unable to follow? Why dost thou presume so far? what dost thou think of thyself? what dost thou imagine thyself to be? Hear what thou art: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.” See, that is how thou wilt speedily become manifest to thyself, who art now talking so loftily, and knowest not that thou art but a child. Thou promisest me thy death, and thou wilt deny me thy life. Thou, who now thinkest thyself able to die for me, learn to live first for thyself; for in fearing the death of thy flesh, thou wilt occasion the death of thy soul. Just as much as it is life to confess Christ, it is death to deny Him.

2. Or was it that the Apostle Peter, as some with a perverse kind of favor strive to excuse him,1246 did not deny Christ, because, when questioned by the maid, he replied that he did not know the man, as the other evangelists more expressly affirm? As if, indeed, he that 1246 See Ambrose, on Luke xxii. denies the man Christ does not deny Christ; and so denies Him in respect of what He became on our account, that the nature He had given us might not be lost. Whoever, therefore, acknowledges Christ as God, and disowns Him as man, Christ died not for him; for as man it was that Christ died. He who disowns Christ as man, finds no reconciliation to God by the Mediator. For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.1247 He that denies Christ as man is not justified: for as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one man shall many be made righteous.1248 He that denies Christ as man, shall not rise again into the resurrection of life; for by man is death, and by man is also the resurrection of the dead: for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.1249 And by what means is He the Head of the Church, but by His manhood, because the Word was made flesh, that is, God, the Onlybegotten of God the Father, became man. And how then can one be in the body of Christ who denies the man Christ? Or how can one be a member who disowns the Head? But why linger over a multitude of reasons when the Lord Himself undoes all the windings of human argumentation? For He says not, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied the man; or, as He was wont to speak in His more familiar condescension with men, The cock shall not crow till thou hast thrice denied the Son of man; but He says, “till thou hast denied me thrice.” What is that “me,” but just what He was, and what was He but Christ? Whatever of Him, therefore, he denied, he denied Himself, he denied the Christ, he denied the Lord his God. For Thomas also, his fellow-disciple, when he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God,” did not handle the Word, but only His flesh; and laid not his inquisitive hands on the incorporeal nature of God, but on His human body.1250 And so he touched the man, and yet recognized his God. If, then, what the latter touched, Peter denied; what the latter invoked, Peter offended. “The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice.” Although thou say, “I know not the man;” although thou say, “Man, I know not what thou sayest;” although thou say, “I am not one of His disciples;”1251 thou wilt be denying me. If, which it were sinful to doubt, Christ so spake, and foretold the truth, then doubtless Peter denied Christ. Let us not accuse Christ in defending Peter. Let infirmity acknowledge its sin; for there is no falsehood in the Truth. When Peter’s infirmity acknowledged its sin, his acknowledgment was full; and the greatness of the evil he had committed in denying Christ, he showed by his tears. He himself reproves his defenders, and for their conviction, brings his tears forward as witnesses. Nor have we, on our part, in so speaking, any delight in accusing the first of the apostles; but in 1247 1 Tim. ii. 5. 1248 Rom. v. 19. 1249 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. 1250 Chap. xx. 27, 28. 1251 Matt. xxvi. 34, 69–74, and Luke xxii. 55–60. looking on him, we ought to take home the lesson to ourselves, that no man should place his confidence in human strength. For what else had our Teacher and Saviour in view, but to show us, by making the first of the apostles himself an example, that no one ought in any way to presume of himself? And that, therefore, really took place in Peter’s soul, for which he gave cause in his body. And yet he did not go before in the Lord’s behalf, as he rashly presumed, but did so otherwise than he reckoned. For before the death and resurrection of the Lord, he both died when he denied, and returned to life when he wept; but he died, because he himself had been proud in his presumption, and he lived again, because that Other had looked on him with kindness.

1. Our special attention, brethren, must be earnestly turned to God, in order that we may be able to obtain some intelligent apprehension of the words of the holy Gospel, which have just been ringing in our ears. For the Lord Jesus saith: “Let not your heart be troubled. Believe1252 in God, and believe or, believe also in me.” That they might not as men be afraid of death, and so be troubled, He comforts them by affirming Himself also to be God. “Believe,” He says, “in God, believe also in me.” For it follows as a consequence, that if ye believe in God, ye ought to believe also in me: which were no consequence if Christ were not God. “Believe in God, and believe in” Him, who, by nature and not by robbery, is equal with God; for He emptied Himself; not, however, by losing the form of God, but by taking the form of a servant.1253 You are afraid of death as regards this servant form, “let not your heart be troubled,” the form of God will raise it again.

2. But why have we this that follows, “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” but that they were also in fear about themselves? And therein they might have heard the words, “Let not your heart be troubled.” For, was there any of them that could be free from fear, when Peter, the most confident and forward of them all, was told, “The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice”?1254 Considering themselves, therefore, beginning with Peter, as destined to perish, they had cause to be troubled: but when they now hear, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you,” they are revived from their trouble, made certain and confident that after all the perils of temptations they shall dwell with Christ in the presence of God. For, albeit one is stronger than another, one wiser than another, one more righteous than another, “in the Father’s house there are many mansions;” none of them shall remain outside that house, where every one, according to his deserts, is to receive a mansion. All alike have that penny, which the householder orders to be given to all that have wrought in the vineyard, making no distinction therein between those who have labored less and those who have labored more:1255 by which penny, of course, is signified eternal life, whereto no one any longer lives to a different length than others, since in eternity life has no diversity in its measure. But the many mansions point to the different grades of merit in that one eternal life. For there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for 1252 A few of the mss. have “ye believe,” after the Vulgate: the Greek verb also, πιστεύετε which occurs twice in this clause, is doubtful, signifying, ye believe, or, believe (imperative).—Migne. 1253 Phil. ii. 6, 7. 1254 Chap. xiii. 38. 1255 Matt. xx. 9. one star differeth from another star in glory; and so also the resurrection of the dead. The saints, like the stars in the sky, obtain in the kingdom different mansions of diverse degrees of brightness; but on account of that one penny no one is cut off from the kingdom; and God will be all in all1256 in such a way, that, as God is love,1257 love will bring it about that what is possessed by each will be common to all. For in this way every one really possesses it, when he loves to see in another what he has not himself. There will not, therefore, be any envying amid this diversity of brightness, since in all of them will be reigning the unity of love.

3. Every Christian heart, therefore, must utterly reject the idea of those who imagine that there are many mansions spoken of, because there will be some place outside the kingdom of heaven, which shall be the abode of those blessed innocents who have departed this life without baptism, because without it they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Faith like this is not faith, inasmuch as it is not the true and catholic faith. Are you not so foolish and blinded with carnal imaginations as to be worthy of reprobation, if you should thus separate the mansion, I say not of Peter and Paul, or any of the apostles, but even of any baptized infant from the kingdom of heaven; do you not think yourselves deserving of reprobation in thus putting a separation between these and the house of God the Father? For the Lord’s words are not, In the whole world, or, In all creation, or, In everlasting life and blessedness, there are many mansions; but He says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” Is not that the house where we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens?1258 Is not that the house whereof we sing to the Lord, “Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; they shall praise Thee for ever and ever”?1259 Will you then venture to separate from the kingdom of heaven the house, not of every baptized brother, but of God the Father Himself, to whom all we who are brethren say, “Our Father, who art in heaven,”1260 or divide it in such a way as to make some of its mansions inside, and some outside, the kingdom of heaven? Far, far be it from those who desire to dwell in the kingdom of heaven, to be willing to dwell in such folly with you: far be it, I say, that since every house of sons that are reigning can be nowhere else but in the kingdom, any part of the royal house itself should be outside the kingdom.

4. “And if I go,” He says, “and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” O Lord Jesus, how goest Thou to prepare a place, if there are already many 1256 1 Cor. xv. 41, 42, 28. 1257 1 John iv. 8. 1258 2 Cor. v. 1. 1259 Ps. lxxxiv. 4. 1260 Matt. vi. 9. mansions in Thy Father’s house, where Thy people shall dwell with Thyself? Or if Thou receivest them unto Thyself, how wilt Thou come again, who never withdrawest Thy presence? Such subjects as these, beloved, were we to attempt to explain them with such brevity as seems within the proper bounds of our discourse to-day, would certainly suffer in clearness from compression, and the very brevity would become itself a second obscurity; we shall therefore defer this debt, which the bounty of our Family-head will enable us to repay at a more suitable opportunity.

on the same passage.

1. We acknowledge, beloved brethren, that we are owing you, and ought now to repay, what was left over for consideration, how we can understand that there is no real mutual contrariety between these two statements, namely, that after saying, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you, that I go to prepare a place for you;”—where He makes it clear enough that He said so to them for the very reason that there are many mansions there already, and there is no need of preparing any;1261—the Lord again says: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” How is it that He goes and prepares a place, if there are many mansions already? If there were not such, He would have said, “I go to prepare.” Or if the place has still to be prepared, would He not then also properly have said, “I go to prepare”? Are these mansions in existence already, and yet needing still to be prepared? For if they were not in existence, He would have said, “I go to prepare.” And yet, because their present state of existence is such as still to stand in need of preparation, He does not go to prepare them in the same sense as they already exist; but if He go and prepare them as they shall be hereafter, He will come again and receive His own to Himself: that where He is, there they may be also. How then are there mansions in the Father’s house, and these not different ones but the same, which already exist in a sense in which they can admit of no preparation, and yet do not exist, inasmuch as they are still to be prepared? How are we to think of this, but in the same way as the prophet, who also declares of God, that He has [already] made that which is yet to be. For he says not, Who will make what is yet to be, but, “Who has made what is yet to be.”1262 Therefore He has both made such 1261 The apparent contrariety that Augustin here deals with, partly arises from a mistaken interpretation of the second half of verse 2, as given above. His Latin version read, si quo minus, dixissem vobis quia vado, etc., and is a close verbal rendering of the original text, as found in several mss.,—εἰ δὲ μὴ, εἶπον ἂν ὑμῖν, ὅτι πορεύομαι,—although some others omit the ὅτι. But while verbally exact, grammatical accuracy and a fair exegesis will admit of a pause after ὑμῖν (vobis), as the general sense of the passage requires. ῞Οτι might thus be used in the sense of “because;” or, as it often is, as a particle introducing a direct statement.—Tr. 1262 Isa. xlv. 11, according to the Septuagint, whose reading, as usual, is followed by Augustin, although here a very manifest mistranslation of the Hebrew. The words are, “Thus saith Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel ( ויצּרו האיתות שאלוני ) and his Maker, Ask me of things to come,” etc. This is the rendering really in accordance with the usual Hebrew idiom, with the sense of the passage itself, and with the frequent use of Yotser (Maker) by Isaiah. It is that also approved by the Masoretic pointing, and followed generally by the other translations, including the Vulgate, which has: plastes ejus: ventura interrogate me, etc. The LXX., however, make ha’othiyyoth things and is yet to make them. For they have not been made at all if He has not made them; nor will they ever be if He make them not Himself. He has made them therefore in the way of fore-ordaining them; He has yet to make them in the way of actual elaboration. Just as the Gospel plainly intimates when He chose His disciples, that is to say, at the time of His calling them;1263 and yet the apostle says, “He chose us before the foundation of the world,”1264 to wit, by predestination, not by actual calling. “And whom He did predestinate, them He also called;”1265 He hath chosen by predestination before the foundation of the world, He chooses by calling before its close. And so also has He prepared those mansions, and is still preparing them and He who has already made the things which are yet to be, is now preparing, not different ones, but the very mansions He has already prepared: what He has prepared in predestination, He is preparing by actual working. Already, therefore, they are, as respects predestination; if it were not so, He would have said, I will go and prepare, that is, I will predestinate. But because they are not yet in a state of practical preparedness, He says, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself.”

2. But He is in a certain sense preparing the dwellings by preparing for them the dwellers. As, for instance, when He said, “In my Father’s house are many dwellings,” what else can we suppose the house of God to mean but the temple of God? And what that is, ask the apostle, and he will reply, “For the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are.”1266 This is also the kingdom of God, which the Son is yet to deliver up to the Father; and hence the same apostle says, “Christ, the beginning, and then they that are Christ’s in His presence; then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father;”1267 that is, those whom He has redeemed by His blood, He shall then have delivered up to stand before His Father’s face. This is that kingdom of heaven whereof it is said, “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man who sowed good seed in his field. But the good seed are the children of the kingdom;” and although now they are mingled with tares, at the end the King Himself shall send forth His angels, “and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”1268 The kingdom will shine forth in the kingdom when those that are the kingdom dependent on yots’ro (notwithstanding its own suffix), instead of the verb that follows, and reads, ὁ ποιήσας (αὐτὸν in some copies) τὰ ἐπερχόμενα, which Augustin renders in the text: qui fecit quæ futura sunt.—Tr. 1263 Luke vi. 13. 1264 Eph. i. 4. 1265 Rom. viii. 30. 1266 1 Cor. iii. 17. 1267 1 Cor. xv. 23, 24. 1268 Matt. xiii. 24, 38–43. shall have reached the kingdom; just as we now pray when we say, “Thy kingdom come.”1269 Even now, therefore, already is the kingdom called, but only as yet being called together. For if it were not now called, it could not be then said, “They shall gather out of His kingdom everything that offends.” But the realm is not yet reigning. Accordingly it is already so far the kingdom, that when all offences shall have been gathered out of it, it shall then attain to sovereignty, so as to possess not merely the name of a kingdom, but also the power of government. For it is to this kingdom, standing then at the right hand, that it shall be said in the end, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom;”1270 that is, ye who were the kingdom, but without the power to rule, come and reign; that what you formerly were only in hope, you may now have the power to be in reality. This house of God, therefore, this temple of God, this kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven, is as yet in the process of building, of construction, of preparation, of assembling. In it there will be mansions, even as the Lord is now preparing them; in it there are such already, even as the Lord has already ordained them.

3. But why is it that He went away to make such preparation, when, as it is certainly we ourselves that are the subjects in need of preparation, His doing so will be hindered by leaving us behind? I explain it, Lord, as I can: it was surely this Thou didst signify by the preparation of those mansions, that the just ought to live by faith.1271 For he who is sojourning at a distance from the Lord has need to be living by faith, because by this we are prepared for beholding His countenance.1272 For “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God;”1273 and “He purifieth their hearts by faith.”1274 The former we find in the Gospel, the latter in the Acts of the Apostles. But the faith by which those who are yet to see God have their hearts purified, while sojourning at a distance here, believeth what it doth not see; for if there is sight, there is no longer faith. Merit is accumulating now to the believer, and then the reward is paid into the hand of the beholder. Let the Lord then go and prepare us a place; let Him go, that He may not be seen; and let Him remain concealed, that faith may be exercised. For then is the place preparing, if it is by faith we are living. Let the believing in that place be desired, that the place desired may itself be possessed; the longing of 1269 Matt. vi. 10. 1270 Matt. xxv. 34. 1271 Rom. i. 17. 1272 2 Cor. v. 6–8. 1273 Matt. v. 8. 1274 Acts xv. 9. love is the preparation of the mansion. Prepare thus, Lord, what Thou art preparing; for Thou art preparing us for Thyself, and Thyself for us, inasmuch as Thou art preparing a place both for Thyself in us, and for us in Thee. For Thou hast said, “Abide in me, and I in you.”1275 As far as each one has been a partaker of Thee, some less, some more, such will be the diversity of rewards in proportion to the diversity of merits; such will be the multitude of mansions to suit the inequalities among their inmates; but all of them, none the less, eternally living, and endlessly blessed. Why is it that Thou goest away? Why is it Thou comest again? If I understand Thee aright, Thou withdrawest not Thyself either from the place Thou goest from, or from the place Thou comest from: Thou goest away by becoming invisible, Thou comest by again becoming manifest to our eyes. But unless Thou remainest to direct us how we may still be advancing in goodness of life, how will the place be prepared where we shall be able to dwell in the fullness of joy? Let what we have said suffice on the words which have been read from the Gospel as far as “I will come again, and receive you to myself.” But the meaning of what follows, “That where I am, there ye may be also; and whither I go ye know, and the way ye know,” we shall be in a better condition—after the question put by the disciple, that follows, and which we also may be putting, as it were, through him—for hearing, and more suitably situated for making the subject of our discourse.

1. We have now the opportunity, dearly, beloved, as far as we can, of understanding the earlier words of the Lord from the later, and His previous statements by those that follow, in what you have heard was His answer to the question of the Apostle Thomas. For when the Lord was speaking above of the mansions, of which He both said that they already were in His Father’s house, and that He was going to prepare them; where we understood that those mansions already existed in predestination, and are also being prepared through the purifying by faith of the hearts of those who are hereafter to inhabit them, seeing that they themselves are the very house of God; and what else is it to dwell in God’s house than to be in the number of His people, since His people are at the same time in God, and God in them? To make this preparation the Lord departed, that by believing in Him, though no longer visible, the mansion, whose outward form is always hid in the future, may now by faith be prepared: for this reason, therefore, He had said, “And if I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” In reply to this, “Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou goest: and how can we know the way?” Both of these the Lord had said that they knew; both of them this other declares that he does not know, to wit, the place to which, and the way whereby, He is going. But he does not know that he is speaking falsely; they knew, therefore, and did not know that they knew. He will convince them that they already know what they imagine themselves still to be ignorant of. “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” What, brethren, does He mean? See, we have just heard the disciple asking, and the Master instructing, and we do not yet, even after His voice has sounded in our ears, apprehend the thought that lies hid in His words. But what is it we cannot apprehend? Could His apostles, with whom He was talking, have said to Him, We do not know Thee? Accordingly, if they knew Him, and He Himself is the way, they knew the way; if they knew Him who is Himself the truth, they knew the truth; if they knew Him who is also the life, they knew the life. Thus, you see, they were convinced that they knew what they knew not that they knew.

2. What is it, then, that we also have not apprehended in this discourse? What else, think you, brethren, but just that He said, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know”? And here we have discovered that they knew the way, because they knew Him who is the way: the way is that by which we go; but is the way the place also to which we go? And yet each of these He said that they knew, both whither He was going, and the way. There was need, therefore, for His saying, “I am the way,” in order to show those who knew Him that they knew the way, which they thought themselves ignorant of; but what need was there for His saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” when, after knowing the way by which He went, they had still to learn whither He was going, but just because it was to the truth and to the life He was going? By Himself, therefore, He was going to Himself. And whither go we, but to Him, and by what way go we, but by Him? He, therefore, went to Himself by Himself, and we by Him to Him; yea, likewise both He and we go thus to the Father. For He says also in another place of Himself, “I go to the Father;”1276 and here on our account He says, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” And in this way, He goeth by Himself both to Himself and to the Father, and we by Him both to Him and to the Father. Who can apprehend such things save he who has spiritual discernment? and how much is it that even he can apprehend, although thus spiritually discerning? Brethren, how can you desire me to explain such things to you? Only reflect how lofty they are. You see what I am, I see what you are; in all of us the body, which is corrupted, burdens the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things.1277 Do we think we can say, “To Thee have I lifted up my soul, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens”?1278 But burdened as we are with so great a weight, under which we groan, how shall I lift up my soul unless He lift it with me who laid His own down for me? I shall speak then as I can, and let each of you who is able receive it. As He gives, I speak; as He gives, the receiver receiveth; and as He giveth, there is faith for him who cannot yet receive with understanding. For, saith the prophet, “If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand.” 1279

3. Tell me, O my Lord, what to say to Thy servants, my fellow-servants. The Apostle Thomas had Thee before him in order to ask Thee questions, and yet could not understand Thee unless he had Thee within him; I ask Thee because I know that Thou art over me; and I ask, seeking, as far as I can, to let my soul diffuse itself in that same region over me where I may listen to Thee, who usest no external sound to convey Thy teaching. Tell me, I pray, how it is that Thou goest to Thyself. Didst Thou formerly leave Thyself to come to us, especially as Thou camest not of Thyself, but the Father sent Thee? I know, indeed, that Thou didst empty Thyself; but in taking the form of a servant,1280 it was neither that Thou didst lay down the form of God as something to return to, or that Thou lost it as something to 1276 Chap. xvi. 10. 1277 Wisd. ix. 15. 1278 Ps. cxxiii. 1. 1279 Isa. vii. 9, according to LXX., which reads, ἐὰν μὴ πιστεύσητε, οὐδὲ μὴ συνῆτε. תֵאָמֵנזּ , however, will scarcely admit the meaning of “understand” (συνῆτε). There is a play in the Hebrew upon the verb אָמֵי , which is the one used in both clauses, first in the Hiphil, where it means to cleave fast to, to show a firm trust in; and secondly, in the Niphal, to be held fast, to be confirmed in one’s trust. Hence the rendering of our English Bible is more correct: “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.”—Tr. 1280 Phil. ii. 7. be recovered; and yet Thou didst come, and didst place Thyself not only before the carnal eyes, but even in the very hands of men. And how otherwise save in Thy flesh? By means of this Thou didst come, yet abiding where Thou wast; by this means Thou didst return, without leaving the place to which Thou hadst come. If, then, by such means Thou didst come and return, by such means doubtless Thou art not only the way for us to come unto Thee, but wast the way also for Thyself to come and to return. For when Thou didst return to the life, which Thou art Thyself, then of a truth that same flesh of Thine Thou didst bring from death unto life. The Word of God, indeed, is one thing, and man another; but the Word was made flesh, or became man. And so the person of the Word is not different from that of the man, seeing that Christ is both in one person; and in this way, just as when His flesh died. Christ died, and when His flesh was buried, Christ was buried (for thus with the heart we believe unto righteousness, and thus with the mouth do we make confession unto salvation1281); so when the flesh came from death unto life, Christ came to life. And because Christ is the Word of God, He is also the life. And thus in a wonderful and ineffable manner He, who never laid down or lost Himself, came to Himself. But God, as was said, had come through the flesh to men, the truth to liars; for God is true, and every man a liar.1282 When, therefore, He withdrew His flesh from amongst men, and carried it up there where no liar is found, He also Himself—for the Word was made flesh—returned by Himself, that is, by His flesh, to the truth, which is none other but Himself. And this truth, we cannot doubt, although found amongst liars, He preserved even in death; for Christ was once dead, but never false.

4. Take an example, very different in character and wholly inadequate, yet in some lit tle measure helpful to the understanding of God, from things that are in peculiarly intimate subjection to God. See here in my own case, while as far as pertains to my mind I am just the same as yourselves, if I keep silence I am so to myself; but if I speak to you something suited to your understanding, in a certain sense I go forth to you without leaving myself, but at the same time approach you and yet quit not the place from which I proceed. But when I cease speaking, I return in a kind of way to myself, and in a kind of way I remain with you, if you retain what you have heard in the discourse I am delivering. And if the mere image that God made is capable of this, what may not God, the very image of God, not made by, but born of God; whose body, wherein He came forth to us and returned from us, has not ceased to be, like the sound of my voice, but abides there, where it shall die no more, and death shall have no more dominion over it?1283 Much more, perhaps, might and ought to have been said on these words of the Gospel; but your souls ought not to be burdened 1281 Rom. x. 10. 1282 Rom. iii. 4. 1283 Rom. vi. 9. with spiritual food, however pleasant, especially as the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.1284

1. The words of the holy Gospel, brethren, are rightly understood only if they are found to be in harmony with those that precede; for the premises ought to agree with the conclusion, when it is the Truth that speaks. The Lord had said before, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also:” and then had added, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know;” and showed that all He said was that they knew Himself. What, therefore, the meaning was of His going to Himself by Himself,—for He also lets the disciples see that it is by Him that they are to come to Him,—we have already told you, as we could, in our last discourse. When He says, therefore, “That where I am, there ye may be also,” where else were they to be but in Himself? In this way is He also in Himself, and they, therefore, are just where He is, that is, in Himself. Accordingly, He Himself is that eternal life which is yet to be ours, when He has received us unto Himself; and as He is that life eternal, so is it in Him, that where He is there shall we be also, that is to say, in Himself. “For as the Father hath life in Himself,” and certainly that life which He has is in no wise different from what He is Himself as its possessor, “so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself,”1285 inasmuch as He is the very life which He hath in Himself. But shall we then actually be what He is, (namely), the life, when we shall have begun our existence in that life, that is, in Himself? Certainly not, for He, by His very existence as the life, hath life, and is Himself what He hath; and as the life, is in Him, so is He in Himself: but we are not that life, but partakers of His life, and shall be there in such wise as to be wholly incapable of being in ourselves what He is, but so as, while ourselves not the life, to have Him as our life, who has Himself the life on this very account that He Himself is the life. In short, He both exists unchangeably in Himself and inseparably in the Father. But we, when wishing to exist in ourselves, were thrown into inward trouble regarding ourselves, as is expressed in the words, “My soul is cast down within me:”1286 and changing from bad to worse, cannot even remain as we were. But when by Him we come unto the Father, according to His own words, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me,” and abide in Him, no one shall be able to separate us either from the Father or from Him.

2. Connecting, therefore, His previous words with those that follow, He proceeded to say, “If ye had known me, ye should certainly have known my Father also.” This conforms to His previous words, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” And then He adds: “And from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.” But Philip, one of the apostles, not understanding what he had just heard, said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth 1285 Chap. v. 26. 1286 Ps. xlii. 6. us.” And the Lord replied to him, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet have ye not known me, Philip? he that seeth me, seeth also the Father.” Here you see He complains that He had been so long time with them, and yet He was not known. But had He not Himself said, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know;” and on their saying that they knew it not, had convinced them that they did know, by adding the words: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”? How, then, says He now, “Have I been so long time with you, and have ye not known me?” when, in fact, they knew both whither He went and the way, on no other grounds save that they really knew Himself? But this difficulty is easily solved by saying that some of them knew Him, and others did not, and that Philip was one of those who did not know Him; so that, when He said, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know,” He is understood as having spoken to those that knew, and not to Philip, who has it said to him, “Have I been so long time with you, and have ye not known me, Philip?” To such, then, as already knew the Son, was it now also said of the Father, “And from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him:” for such words were used because of the all-sided likeness subsisting between the Father and the Son; so that, because they knew the Son, they might henceforth be said to know the Father. Already, therefore, they knew the Son, if not all of them, those at least to whom it is said, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know;” for He is Himself the way. But they knew not the Father, and so have also to hear, “If ye have known me, ye have known my Father also;” that is, through me ye have known Him also. For I am one, and He another. But that they might not think Him unlike, He adds, “And from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.” For they saw His perfectly resembling Son, but needed to have the truth impressed on them, that exactly such as was the Son whom they saw, was the Father also whom they did not see. And to this points what is afterwards said to Philip, “He that seeth me, seeth also the Father.” Not that He Himself was Father and Son, which is a notion of the Sabellians, who are also called Patripassians,1287 condemned by the Catholic faith; but that Father and Son are so alike, that he who knoweth one knoweth both. For we are accustomed to speak in this way of two who closely resemble each other, to those who are in the habit of seeing one of them, and wish to know what like the other is, so that we say, In seeing the one, you have seen the other. In this way, then, is it said “He that seeth me, seeth also the Father.” Not, certainly, that He who is the Son is also the Father, but that the Son in no respect disagrees with the likeness of the Father. For had not the Father and Son been two persons, it would not have been said, “If ye have known me, ye have known my Father also.” Such is certainly the case for “no one,” He says, “cometh unto the Father but by me: if ye have known me, ye have known my Father also;” because 1287 That is, those who ascribed suffering to the Father; because the Sabellians, denying the distinct personality of the Son, and regarding Him as only a special revelation of God the Father, were chargeable, therefore, with holding that it was God the Father who really suffered and died on the cross.—Tr. it is I, who am the only way to the Father, that will lead you to Him, that He also may Himself become known to you. But as I am in all respects His perfect image, “from henceforth ye know Him” in knowing me; “and have seen Him,” if you have seen me with the spiritual eyesight of the soul.

3. Why, then, Philip, dost thou say, “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us? Have I been so long time with you, and yet have ye not known me, Philip? He that seeth me, seeth the Father also.” If it interests thee much to see this, believe at least what thou seest not. For “how,” He says, “sayest thou, Show us the Father?” If thou hast seen me, who am His perfect likeness, thou hast seen Him to whom I am like. And if thou canst not directly see this, “believest thou not,” at least, “that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” But Philip might say here, “I see Thee indeed, and believe Thy full likeness to the Father; but is one to be reproved and rebuked because, when he sees one who bears a likeness to another, he wishes to see that other to whom he is like? I know, indeed, the image, but as yet I know only the one without the other; it is not enough for me, unless I know that other whose likeness he bears. Show us, therefore, the Father, and it sufficeth us.” But the Master really reproved the disciple because He saw into the heart of his questioner. For it was with the idea, as if the Father were somehow better than the Son, that Philip had the desire to know the Father: and so he did not even know the Son, because believing that He was inferior to another. It was to correct such a notion that it was said, “He that seeth me, seeth the Father also. How sayest thou, Show us the Father?” I see the meaning of thy words: it is not the original likeness thou seekest to see, but it is that other thou thinkest the superior. “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” Why desirest thou to dis cover some distance between those who are thus alike? why cravest thou the separate knowledge of those who cannot be separated? What, after this, He says not only to Philip, but to all of them together, must not now be thrust into a corner, in order that, by His help, it may be the more carefully expounded.

1. Give close attention, and try to understand, beloved; for while it is we who speak it is He Himself who never withdraweth His presence from us who is our Teacher. The Lord saith, what you have just heard read, “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself: but the Father, that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” Even His words, then, are works? Clearly so. For surely he that edifies a neighbor by what he says, works a good work. But what mean the words, “I speak not of myself,” but, I who speak am not of myself? Hence He attributes what He does to Him, of whom He, that doeth them, is. For the Father is not God as born, etc. of any one else, while the Son is God, as equal, indeed, to the Father, but as born of God the Father. Therefore the former is God, but not of God; and the Light, but not of light: whereas the latter is God of God, Light of Light.

2. For in connection with these two clauses,—the one where it is said, “I speak not of myself;” and the other, which runs, “but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works,”—we are opposed by two different classes of heretics, who, by each of them holding only to one clause, run off, not in one, but opposite directions, and wander far from the pathway of truth. For instance, the Arians say, See here, the Son is not equal to the Father, He speaketh not of Himself. The Sabellians, or Patripassians, on the other hand, say, See, He who is the Father is also the Son; for what else is this, “The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works,” but I that do them dwell in myself? You make contrary assertions, and that not only in the sense that any one thing is false, that is, contrary to truth, but in this also, when two things that are both false contradict one another. In your wanderings you have taken opposite directions; midway between the two is the path you have left. You are a far longer distance apart from each other than from the very way you have both forsaken. Come hither, you from the one side, and you from the other: pass not across, the one to the other, but come from both sides to us, and make this the place of your mutual meeting. Ye Sabellians, acknowledge the Being you overlook; Arians, set Him whom you subordinate in His place of equality, and you will both be walking with us in the pathway of truth. For you have grounds on both sides that make mutual admonition a duty. Listen, Sabellian: so far is the Son from being the same as the Father, and so truly is He another, that the Arian maintains His inferiority to the Father. Listen, Arian: so truly is the Son equal to the Father, that the Sabellian declares Him to be identical with the Father. Do thou restore the personality thou hast abstracted, and thou, the full dignity thou hast lowered, and both of you stand together on the same ground as ourselves: because the one of you who has been an Arian, for the conviction of the Sabellian, never lets out of sight the personality of Him who is distinct from the Father, and the other who has been a Sabellian takes care, for the conviction of the Arian, of not impairing the dignity of Him who is equal with the Father. For to both of you He cries, “I and my Father are one.”1288 When He says “one,” let the Arians listen; when He says, “we are,” let the Sabellians give heed, and no longer continue in the folly of denying, the one, His equality [with the Father], the other, His distinct personality. If, then, in saying, “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself,” He is thereby accounted of a power so inferior, that what He doeth is not what He Himself willeth; listen to what He also said, “As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.” And so likewise, if in saying, “The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works,” He is on that account not to be regarded as distinct in person from the Father, let us listen to His other words, “What things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise;”1289 and He will be understood as speaking not of one person twice over, but of two who are one. But just because their mutual equality is such as not to interfere with their distinct personality, therefore He speaketh not of Himself, because He is not of Himself; and the Father also, that dwelleth in Him, Himself doeth the works, because He, by whom and with whom He doeth them, is not, save of the Father Himself. And then He goes on to say, “Believe ye not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? Or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” Formerly it was Philip only who was reproved, but now, it is shown that he was not the only one there that needed reproof. “For the very works’ sake,” He says, “believe ye that I am in the Father, and the Father in me:” for had we been separated, we should have been unable to do any kind of work inseparably.

3. But what is this that follows? “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.” And so He promised that He Himself would also do those greater works. Let not the servant exalt himself above his Lord, or the disciple above his Master.1290 He says that they will do greater works than He doeth Himself; but it is all by His doing such in or by them, and not as if they did them of themselves. Hence the song that is addressed to Him, “I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.”1291 But what, then, are those greater works? Was it that their very shadow, as they themselves passed by, healed the sick?1292 For it is a mightier thing for a shadow, than for the hem of a garment, to possess the power of healing.1293 The one work was done by Christ Himself, the other by them; and yet it was He that did both. Nevertheless, when He 1288 Chap. x. 30. 1289 Chap. v. 21, 19. 1290 Chap. xiii. 16. 1291 Ps. xviii. 1. 1292 Acts v. 15. 1293 Matt. xiv. 36. so spake, He was commending the efficacious power1294 of His own words: for it was in this sense He had said, “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” What works was He then referring to, but the words He was speaking? They were hearing and believing, and their faith was the fruit of those very words: howbeit, when the disciples preached the gospel, it was not small numbers like themselves, but nations also that believed; and such, doubtless, are greater works. And yet He said not, Greater works than these shall ye do, to lead us to suppose that it was only the apostles who would do so; for He added, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” Is the case then so, that he that believeth on Christ doeth the same works as Christ, or even greater than He did? Points like these are not to be treated in a cursory way, nor ought they to be hurriedly disposed of; and, therefore, as our present discourse must be brought to a close, we are obliged to defer their further consideration.

on the same passage.

1. It is no easy matter to comprehend what is meant by, or in what sense we are to receive, these words of the Lord, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also:” and then, to this great difficulty in the way of our understanding, He has added another still more difficult, “And greater things than these shall he do.” What are we to make of it? We have not found one who did such works as Christ did; and are we likely to find one who will do even greater? But we remarked in our last discourse, that it was a greater deed to heal the sick by the passing of their shadow, as was done by the disciples, than as the Lord Himself did by the touch of the hem of His garment; and that more believed on the apostles than on the Lord Himself, when preaching with His own lips; so that we might suppose works like these to be understood as greater: not that the disciple was to be greater than his Master, or the servant than his Lord, or the adopted son than the Only-begotten, or man than God, but that by them He Himself would condescend to do these greater works, while telling them in another passage, “Without me ye can do nothing.”1295 While He Himself, on the other hand, to say nothing of His other works, which are numberless, made them without any aid from themselves, and without them made this world; and because He Himself thought meet to become man, without them He made also Himself. But what have they made or done without Him, save sin? And last of all, He straightway also withdrew from the subject all that could cause us agitation; for after saying, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;” He immediately went on to add, “Because I go unto the Father; and whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do.” He who had said, “He will do,” afterwards said, “I will do;” as if He had said, Let not this appear to you impossible; for he that believeth on me can never become greater than I am, but it is I who shall then be doing greater things than now; greater things by him that believeth on me, than by myself apart from him; yet it is I myself apart from him,1296 and I myself by him that will do the works: and as it is apart from him, it is not he that will do them; and as, on the other hand, it is by him, although not by his own self, it is he also that will do them. And besides, to do greater things by one than apart from one, is not a sign of deficiency, but of condescension. For what can servants render unto the Lord for all His benefits towards them?1297 And sometimes He hath condescended to number this also amongst His other benefits towards them, namely, to do greater works by them than 1295 Chap. xv. 5. 1296 That is, here, “without any self-originating aid of his,” as if he had any independent and meritorious share in the work. Augustin plays on the prepositions, per (eum), and præter (eum).—Tr. 1297 Ps. cxvi. 12. apart from them. Did not that rich man go away sad from His presence, when seeking counsel about eternal life? He heard, and cast it away: and yet in after days the counsel that fell on his ears was followed, not by one, but by many, when the good Master was speaking by the disciples; He was an object of contempt to the rich man, when warned by Himself directly, and of love to those whom by means of poor men He transformed from rich into poor. Here, then, you see, He did greater works when preached by believers, than when speaking Himself to hearers.

2. But there is still something to excite thought in His doing such greater works by the apostles; for He said not, as if merely with reference to them, The works that I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these shall ye do: but wishing to be understood as speaking of all that belonged to His family, said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” If, then, he that believeth shall do such works, he that shall do them not is certainly no believer: just as “He that loveth me, keepeth my commandments,”1298 implies, of course, that he who keepeth them not, loveth not. In another place, also, He says, “He that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who buildeth his house upon a rock;”1299 and he, therefore, who is unlike this wise man, without doubt either heareth these sayings and doeth them not, or faileth even to hear them. “He that believeth in me,” He says, “though he die, yet shall he live;”1300 and he, therefore, that shall not live, is certainly no believer now. In a similar way, also, it is said here, “He that believeth in me shall do such works:” he is, therefore, no believer who shall not do so. What have we here, then, brethren? Is it that one is not to be reckoned among believers in Christ, who shall not do greater works than Christ? It were hard, unreasonable, intolerable, to suppose so; that is, unless it be rightly understood. Let us listen, then, to the apostle, when he says, “To him that believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”1301 This is the work in which we may be doing the works of Christ, for even our very believing in Christ is the work of Christ. It is this He worketh in us, not certainly without us. Hear now, then, and understand, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also:” I do them first, and he shall do them afterwards; for I do such works that he may do them also. And what are the works, but the making of a righteous man out of an ungodly one?

3. “And greater works than these shall he do.” Than what, pray? Shall we say that one is doing greater works than all that Christ did who is working out his own salvation with fear and trembling?1302 A work which Christ is certainly working in him, but not without 1298 Chap. xiv. 21. 1299 Matt. vii. 24. 1300 Chap. xi. 25. 1301 Rom. iv. 5. 1302 Phil. ii. 12. him; and one which I might, without hesitation, call greater than the heavens and the earth, and all in both within the compass of our vision. For both heaven and earth shall pass away,1303 but the salvation and justi fication of those predestinated thereto, that is, of those whom He foreknoweth, shall continue forever. In the former there is only the working of God, but in the latter there is also His image. But there are also in the heavens, thrones, governments, principalities, powers, archangels, and angels, which are all of them the work of Christ; and is it, then, greater works also than these that he doeth, who, with Christ working in him, is a co-worker in his own eternal salvation and justification? I dare not call for any hurried decision on such a point: let him who can, understand, and let him who can, judge whether it is a greater work to create righteous beings than to make righteous the ungodly. For at least, if there is equal power employed in both, there is greater mercy in the latter. For “this is the great mystery of godliness which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”1304 But when He said, “Greater works than these shall he do,” there is no necessity requiring us to suppose that all of Christ’s works are to be understood. For He spake, perhaps, only of these He was now doing; and the work He was doing at that time was uttering the words of faith, and of such works specially had He spoken just before when He said, “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself: but the Father, that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” His words, accordingly, were His works. And it is assuredly something less to preach the words of righteousness, which He did apart from us, than to justify the ungodly, which He does in such a way in us that we also are doing it ourselves. It remains for us to inquire how the words are to be understood, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it.” Because of the many things His believing ones ask, and receive not, there is no small question claiming our attention; but as this discourse must now be concluded, we must allow at least a little delay for its consideration and discussion.

again on the same passage.

1. The Lord, by His promise, gave those whose hopes were resting on Himself a special ground of confidence, when He said, “For I go to the Father; and whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it.” His proceeding, therefore, to the Father, was not with any view of abandoning the needy, but of hearing and answering their petitions. But what is to be made of the words, “Whatsoever ye shall ask,” when we behold His faithful ones so often asking and not receiving? Is it, shall we say, for no other reason but that they ask amiss? For the Apostle James made this a ground of reproach when he said, “Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”1305 What one, therefore, wishes to receive, in order to turn to an improper use, God in His mercy rather refuses to bestow. Nay, more, if a man asks what would, if answered, only tend to his injury, there is surely greater cause to fear, lest what God could not withhold with kindness, He should give in His anger. Do we not see how the Israelites got to their own hurt what their guilty lusting craved? For while it was raining manna on them from heaven, they desired to have flesh to eat.1306 They disdained what they had, and shamelessly sought what they had not: as if it were not better for them to have asked not to have their unbecoming desires gratified with the food that was wanting, but to have their own dislike removed, and be made themselves to receive aright the food that was provided. For when evil becomes our delight, and what is good the reverse, we ought to be entreating God rather to win us back to the love of the good, than to grant us the evil. Not that it is wrong to eat flesh, for the apostle, speaking of this very thing, says, “Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused which is received with thanksgiving;1307 but because, as he also says, “It is evil for that man who eateth with offense;”1308 and if so, with offense to man, how much more so if to God, to whom it was no light offense, on the part of the Israelites, to reject what wisdom was supplying, and ask for that which lust was craving: although they would not actually make the request, but murmured because it was wanting. But to let us know that the wrong lies not with any creature of God, but with obstinate disobedience and inordinate desire, it was not in swine’s flesh that the first man found death, but in an apple;1309 and it was not for a fowl, but for a dish of pottage, that Esau lost his birthright.1310

1. We have heard, brethren, while the Gospel was read, the Lord saying: “If ye love me, keep my commandments: and I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye shall know Him; for He shall dwell with you, and shall be in you.” 1315 There are many points which might form the subject of inquiry in these few words of the Lord; but it were too much for us either to search into all that is here for the searching, or to find out all that we here search for. Nevertheless, as far as the Lord is pleased to grant us the power, and in proportion to our capacity and yours, attend to what we ought to say and you to hear, and receive, beloved, what we on our part are able to give, and apply to Him for that wherein we fail. It is the Spirit, the Comforter, that Christ has promised to His apostles; but let us notice the way in which He gave the promise. “If ye love me,” He says, “keep my commandments: and I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever: even the Spirit of truth.” We have here, at all events, the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, whom the catholic faith acknowledges to be consubstantial and co-eternal with Father and Son: He it is of whom the apostle says, “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given unto us.”1316 How, then, doth the Lord say, “If ye love me, keep my commandments: and I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter;” when He saith so of the Holy Spirit, without having whom we can neither love God nor keep His commandments? How can we love so as to receive Him, without whom we cannot love at all? or how shall we keep the commandments so as to receive Him, without whom we have no power to keep them? Or can it be that the love wherewith we love Christ has a prior place within us, so that, by thus loving Christ and keeping His commandments, we become worthy of receiving the Holy Spirit, in order that the love, not of Christ, which had already preceded, but of God the Father, may be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given unto us? Such a thought is altogether wrong. For he who believes that he loveth the Son, and loveth not the Father, certainly loveth not the Son, but some figment of his own 1315 Augustin has cognoscetis for the second “know,” and scit for that immediately preceding. The Greek text, however, has γινώσκω in both places, and in the present tense. He has also manebit et in vobis erit. The tense of μενει, whether present or future, depends simply on the place of the accent, μένει, or μενεῖ: while, as between the two readings ἐστὶν and žσται, the preponderance of ms. authority seems in favor of the latter, although the present γινώσκετε in the principal clause would be more naturally followed by an equally proleptic present in those which follow.—Tr. 1316 Rom. v. 5. imagination. And besides, this is the apostolic declaration, “No one saith, Lord Jesus,1317 but in the Holy Spirit:”1318 and who is it that calleth Him Lord Jesus but he that loveth Him, if he so call Him in the way the apostle intended to be understood? For many call Him so with their lips, but deny Him in their hearts and works; just as He saith of such, “For they profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him.”1319 If it is by works He is denied, it is doubtless also by works that His name is truly invoked. “No one,” therefore, “saith, Lord Jesus,” in mind, in word, in deed, with the heart, the lips, the labor of the hands,—no one saith, Lord Jesus, but in the Holy Spirit; and no one calls Him so but he that loveth. And accordingly the apostles were already calling Him Lord Jesus: and if they called Him so, in no way that implied a feigned utterance, with the mouth confessing, in heart and works denying Him; if they called Him so in all truthfulness of soul, there can be no doubt they loved. And how, then, did they love, but in the Holy Spirit? And yet they are commanded to love Him and keep His commandments, previous and in order to their receiving the Holy Spirit: and yet, without having that Spirit, they certainly could not love Him and keep His commandments.

2. We are therefore to understand that he who loves has already the Holy Spirit, and by what he has becomes worthy of a fuller possession, that by having the more he may love the more. Already, therefore, had the disciples that Holy Spirit whom the Lord promised, for without Him they could not call Him Lord; but they had Him not as yet in the way promised by the Lord. Accordingly they both had, and had Him not, inasmuch as they had Him not as yet to the same extent as He was afterwards to be possessed. They had Him, therefore, in a more limited sense: He was yet to be given them in an ampler measure. They had Him in a hidden way, they were yet to receive Him in a way that was manifest; for this present possession had also a bearing on that fuller gift of the Holy Spirit, that they might come to a conscious knowledge of what they had. It is in speaking of this gift that the apostle says: “Now we have received, not the spirit of this world, but the spirit which is of God, that we may know the things that are freely given to us of God.”1320 For that same manifest bestowal of the Holy Spirit the Lord made, not once, but on two separate occasions. For close on the back of His resurrection from the dead He breathed on them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.”1321 And because He then gave the Spirit, did He on that account fail in afterwards 1317 Or, “Jesus is Lord.” The weight of authority is clearly in favor of the reading followed by Augustin—λέγει, Κύριος ’Ιησοῦς, giving the direct utterance of the speaker; and not the indirect accusative, Κύριον ’Ιησοῦν, followed by our English version.—Tr. 1318 1 Cor. xii. 3. 1319 Tit. i. 16. 1320 1 Cor. ii. 12. 1321 Chap. xx. 22. sending Him according to His promise? Or was it not the very same Spirit who was both then breathed upon them by Himself, and afterwards sent by Him from heaven?1322 And so, why that same giving on His part which took place publicly, also took place twice, is another question: for it may be that this twofold bestowal of His in a public way took place because of the two Commandments of love, that is, to our neighbor and to God, in order that love might be impressively intimated as pertaining to the Holy Spirit. And if any other reason is to be sought for, we cannot at present allow our discourse to be improperly prolonged by such an inquiry: provided, however, it be admitted that, without the Holy Spirit, we can neither love Christ nor keep His commandments; while the less experience we have of His presence, the less also can we do so; and the fuller our experience, so much the greater our ability. Accordingly, the promise is no vain one, either to him who has not [the Holy Spirit], or to him who has. For it is made to him who has not, in order that he may have; and to him who has, that he may have more abundantly. For were it not that He was possessed by some in smaller measure than by others, St. Elisha would not have said to St. Elijah, “Let the spirit that is in thee be in a twofold measure in me.”1323

3. But when John the Baptist said, “For God giveth not the Spirit by measure,”1324 he was speaking exclusively of the Son of God, who received not the Spirit by measure; for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead.1325 And no more is it independently of the grace of the Holy Spirit that the Mediator between God and men is the man Christ Jesus:1326 for with His own lips He tells us that the prophetical utterance had been fulfilled in Himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because He hath anointed me, and hath sent me to preach the gospel to the poor.”1327 For His being the Only-begotten, the equal of the Father, is not of grace, but of nature; but the assumption of human nature into the personal unity of the Only-begotten is not of nature, but of grace, as the Gospel acknowledges itself when it says, “And the child grew, and waxed strong, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was in Him.”1328 But to others He is given by measure,—a measure ever enlarging until each has received his full complement up to the limits of his own perfection. As we are also reminded by the apostle, “Not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, but to think soberly; according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of 1322 Acts ii. 4. 1323 2 Kings ii. 9. 1324 Chap. iii. 34. 1325 Col. ii. 9. 1326 1 Tim. ii. 5. 1327 Luke iv. 18–21. 1328 Luke ii. 40. faith.”1329 Nor is it the Spirit Himself that is divided, but the gifts bestowed by the Spirit: for there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.1330

4. But when He says, “I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete,” He intimates that He Himself is also a paraclete. For paraclete is in Latin called advocatus (advocate); and it is said of Christ, “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”1331 But He said that the world could not receive the Holy Spirit, in much the same sense as it is also said, “The minding of the flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God; neither indeed can be;”1332 just as if we were to say, Unrighteousness cannot be righteous. For in speaking in this passage of the world, He refers to those who love the world; and such a love is not of the Father.1333 And thus the love of this world, which gives us enough to do to weaken and destroy its power within us, is in direct opposition to the love of God, which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us. “The world,” therefore, “cannot receive Him, cause it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” For worldly love possesseth not those invisible eyes, whereby, save in an invisible way, the Holy Spirit cannot be seen.

5. “But ye,” He adds, “shall know Him; for He shall dwell with you, and be in you.” He will be in them, that He may dwell with them; He will not dwell with them to the end that He may be in them: for the being anywhere is prior to the dwelling there. But to prevent us from imagining that His words, “He shall dwell with you,” were spoken in the same sense as that in which a guest usually dwells with a man in a visible way, He explained what “He shall dwell with you” meant, when He added the words, “He shall be in you.” He is seen, therefore, in an invisible way: nor can we have any knowledge of Him unless He be in us. For it is in a similar way that we come to see our conscience within us: for we see the face of another, but we cannot see our own; but it is our own conscience we see, not another’s. And yet conscience is never anywhere but within us: but the Holy Spirit can be also apart from us, since He is given that He may also be in us. But we cannot see and know Him in the only way in which He may be seen and known, unless He be in us.

1. After the promise of the Holy Spirit, lest any should suppose that the Lord was to give Him, as it were, in place of Himself, in any such way as that He Himself would not likewise be with them, He added the words: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” Orphani Greek are pupilli parent-less children in Latin. The one is the Greek, the other the Latin name of the same thing: for in the psalm where we read, “Thou art the helper of the fatherless” in the Latin version, pupillo, the Greek has orphano.1334 Accordingly, although it was not the Son of God that adopted sons to His Father, or willed that we should have by grace that same Father, who is His Father by nature, yet in a sense it is paternal feelings toward us that He Himself displays, when He declares, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” In the same way He calls us also the children of the bridegroom, when He says, “The time will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall the children of the bridegroom fast.”1335 And who is the bridegroom, but Christ the Lord?

2. He then goes on to say, “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more.” How so? the world saw Him then; for under the name of the world are to be understood those of whom He spake above, when saying of the Holy Spirit, “Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” He was plainly visible to the carnal eyes of the world, while manifest in the flesh; but it saw not the Word that lay hid in the flesh: it saw the man, but it saw not God: it saw the covering, but not the Being within. But as, after the resurrection, even His very flesh, which He exhibited both to the sight and to the handling of His own, He refused to exhibit to others, we may in this way perhaps understand the meaning of the words, “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me: because I live, ye shall live also.”

3. What is meant by the words, “Because I live, ye shall live also”? Why did He speak in the present tense of His own living, and in the future of theirs, but just by way of promise that the life also of the resurrection-body, as it preceded in His own case, would certainly follow in theirs? And as His own resurrection was in the immediate future, He put the word in the present tense to signify its speedy approach: but of theirs, as delayed till the end of the world, He said not, ye live; but, “ye shall live.” With elegance and brevity, therefore, by means of two words, one of them in the present tense and the other in the future, He gave the promise of two resurrections, to wit, His own in the immediate future, and ours as yet to come in the end of the world. “Because I live,” He says, “ye shall live also:” because He 1334 Ps. x. 14. 1335 Matt. ix. 15. liveth, therefore shall we live also. For as by man is death, by man also is the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.1336 As it is only through the former that every one is liable to death, it is only through Christ that any one can attain unto life. Because we did not live, we are dead; because He lived, we shall live also. We were dead to Him, when we lived to ourselves; but, because He died in our behalf, He liveth both for Himself and for us. For, because He liveth, we shall live also. For while we were able of ourselves to attain unto death, it is not of ourselves also that life can come into our possession.

4. “In that day,” He says, “ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” In what day, but in that whereof He said, “Ye shall live also”? For then will it be that we can see what we believe. For even now is He in us, and we in Him: this we believe now, but then shall we also know it; although what we know even now by faith, we shall know then by actual vision. For as long as we are in the body, as it now is, to wit, corruptible, and encumbering to the soul, we live at a distance from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight.1337 Then accordingly it will be by sight, for we shall see Him as He is.1338 For if Christ were not even now in us, the apostle would not say, “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead indeed because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.”1339 But that we are also in Him even then, He makes sufficiently clear, when He says, “I am the vine, ye are the branches.”1340 Accordingly in that day, when we shall be living the life, whereby death shall be swallowed up, we shall know that He is in the Father, and we in Him, and He in us; for then shall be completed that very state which is already in the present begun by Him, that He should be in us, and we in Him.

5. “He that hath my commmandments,” He adds, “and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” He that hath [them] in his memory, and keepeth them in his life; who hath them orally, and keepeth them morally; who hath them in the ear, and keepeth them in deed; or who hath them in deed, and keepeth them by perseverance;—“he it is,” He says, “that loveth me.” By works is love made manifest as no fruitless application of a name. “And he that loveth me,” He says, “shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” But what is this, “I will love”? Is it as if He were then only to love, and loveth not at present? Surely not. For how could the Father love us apart from the Son, or the Son apart from the Father? Working as They do inseparably, how can They love apart?1341 But He 1336 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. 1337 2 Cor. v. 7. 1338 1 John iii. 2. 1339 Rom. viii. 10. 1340 Chap. xv. 5. 1341 Separabiliter. said, “I will love him,” in reference to that which follows, “and I will manifest myself to him.” “I will love, and will manifest;” that is, I will love to the very extent of manifesting. For this has been the present aim of His love, that we may believe, and keep hold of the commandment of faith; but then His love will have this for its object, that we may see, and get that very sight as the reward of our faith: for we also love now, by believing in that which we shall see hereafter; but then shall we love in the sight of that which now we believe.

1. While the disciples thus question, and Jesus their Master replies to them, we also, as it were, are learning along with them, when we either read or listen to the holy Gospel. Accordingly, because the Lord had said, “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me,” Judas—not indeed His betrayer, who was surnamed Iscariot, but he whose epistle is read among the canonical Scriptures—asked Him of this very matter: “Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” Let us, too, be as it were questioning disciples with them, and listen to our common Master. For Judas the holy, not the impure, the follower, but not the persecutor of the Lord, has inquired the reason why Jesus was to manifest Himself to His own, and not to the world; why it was that yet a little while, and the world should not see Him, but they should see Him.

2. “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.” Here we have set forth the reason why He is to manifest Himself to His own, and not to that other class whom He distinguishes by the name of the world; and such is the reason also why the one loveth Him, and the other loveth Him not. It is the very reason, whereof it is declared in the sacred psalm, “Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an unholy nation.”1342 For such as love are chosen, because they love: but those who have not love, though they speak with the tongues of men and angels, are become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and though they had the gift of prophecy, and knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and had all faith so that they could remove mountains, they are nothing; and though they distributed all their substance, and gave their body to be burnt, it profiteth them nothing.1343 The saints are distinguished from the world by that love which maketh the one-minded1344 to dwell together in a house.1345 In this 1342 Ps. xliii. 1. 1343 1 Cor. xiii. 1–3. 1344 Unanimes. 1345 Ps. lxviii. 6: according to Augustin’s translation and adaptation of the words ,מֹושיִׁב יְחִירִים בַּיְתָה and which the Vulgate has also rendered somewhat similarly, qui inhabitare facit unius moris in domo. The English version is rather more accordant with the context, “who setteth the solitary in families,” or rather, “who maketh the solitary [lit. those standing alone] to dwell in a house,” marg.; that is, if יָחִיר might not even here retain its proper meaning of “only one,” and, hence “beloved one.” At all events, the word thus used, and its place in the context (see especially the preceding verse), may warrant the combination of both meanings,—that those house Father and Son make their abode, and impart that very love to those whom They shall also honor at last with this promised self manifestation; of which the disciple questioned his Master, that not only those who then listened might learn it from His own lips, but we also from his Gospel. For he had made inquiry about the manifestation of Christ, and heard [in reply] about His loving and abiding. There is therefore a kind of inward manifestation of God, which is entirely unknown to the ungodly, who receive no manifestation of God the Father and the Holy Spirit: of the Son, indeed, there might have been such, but only in the flesh; and that, too, neither of the same kind as the other, nor able under any form to remain with them, save only for a little while; and even that, for judgment, not for rejoicing; for punishment, not for reward.

3. We have now, therefore, to understand, so far as He is pleased to unfold it, the meaning of the words, “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me.” It is true, indeed, that after a little while He was to withdraw even His body, in which the ungodly also were able to see Him, from their sight; for none of them saw Him after His resurrection. But since it was declared on the testimony of angels, “He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven;”1346 and our faith stands to this, that He will come in the same body to judge the living and the dead; there can be no doubt that He will then be seen by the world, meaning by the name, those who are aliens from His kingdom. And, on this account, it is far better to understand Him as having intended to refer at once to that epoch, when He said, “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more,” when in the end of the world He shall be taken away from the sight of the damned, that for the future He may be seen only of those with whom, as those that love Him, the Father and Himself are making their abode. But He said, “a little while,” because that which appears tedious to men is very brief in the sight of God: for of this same “little while” our evangelist, John, himself says, “Little children, it is the last time.”1347

4. But further, lest any should imagine that the Father and Son only, without the Holy Spirit, make their abode with those that love Them, let him recall what was said above of the Holy Spirit, “Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye shall know Him; for He shall dwell with you, and shall be in you” (ver. 17). Here you see that, along with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit also taketh up His abode in the saints; that is to say, within them, as God in His temple. The triune God, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, come to us while we are coming to Them: They come with help, we come with obedience; They come to enlighten, we to behold; They come to fill, we who are “ones standing alone,” friendless, cast off from others, in a human sense, are יְחִירִים , “only ones,” “beloved ones” in the heavenly Father’s sight, to whom He extends a special protection, and provideth a home.—Tr. 1346 Acts i. 11. 1347 1 John ii. 18. to contain: that our vision of Them may not be external, but inward; and Their abiding in us may not be transitory, but eternal. The Son doth not manifest Himself in such a way as this to the world: for the world is spoken of in the passage before us as those, of whom He immediately adds, “He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.” These are such as never see the Father and the Holy Spirit: and see the Son for a little while, not to their attainment of bliss, but to their condemnation; and even Him, not in the form of God, wherein He is equally invisible with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but in human form, in which it was His will to be an object of contempt in suffering, but of terror in judging the world.

5. But when He added, “And the saying which ye have heard is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me,” let us not be filled with wonder or fear: He is not inferior to the Father, and yet He is not, save of the Father: He is not unequal in Himself, but He is not of Himself. For it was no false word He uttered when He said, “He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.” He called them, you see, His own sayings; does He, then, contradict Himself when He said again, “And the saying which ye have heard is not mine”? And, perhaps, it was on account of some intended distinction that, when He said His own, He used “sayings” in the plural; but when He said that “the saying,” that is, the Word, was not His own, but the Father’s, He wished it to be understood of Himself. For in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.1348 For as the Word, He is certainly not His own, but the Father’s: just as He is not His own image, but the Father’s; and is not Himself His own Son, but the Father’s. Rightly, therefore, does He attribute whatever He does, as equal, to the Author of all, of whom He has this very prerogative, that He is in all respects His equal.

1. In the preceding lesson of the holy Gospel, which is followed by the one that has just been read, the Lord Jesus had said that He and the Father would come to those who loved Them, and make Their abode with them. But He had also already said above of the Holy Spirit, “But ye shall know Him; for He shall dwell with you, and shall be in you” (ver. 17): by which we understood that the divine Trinity dwelleth together in the saints as in His own temple. But now He saith, “These things have I spoken unto you while still dwelling with you.” That dwelling, therefore, which He promised in the future, is of one kind; and this, which He declares to be present, is of another. The one is spiritual, and is realized inwardly by the mind; the other is corporal, and is exhibited outwardly to the eye and the ear. The one brings eternal blessedness to those who have been delivered, the other pays its visits in time to those who await deliverance. As regards the one, the Lord never withdraws from those who love Him; as regards the other, He comes and goes. “These things, He says, “have I spoken unto you, while still dwelling with you;” that is, in His bodily presence, wherein He was visibly conversing with them.

2. “But the Comfort,” He adds, “which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” Is it, then, that the Son speaks, and the Holy Spirit teaches, so that we merely get hold of the words that are uttered by the Son, and then understand them by the teaching of the Spirit as if the Son could speak without the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit teach without the Son: or is it not rather that the Son also teacheth and the Spirit speaketh, and, when it is God that speaketh and teacheth anything, that the Trinity itself is speaking and teaching? And just because it is a Trinity, its persons required to be introduced individually, so that we might hear it in its distinct personality, and understand its inseparable nature.1349 Listen to the Father speaking in the passage where thou readest, “The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son:”1350 listen to Him also teaching, in that where thou readest, “Every man that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.”1351 The Son, on the other hand, thou hast just heard speaking; for He saith of Himself, “Whatsoever I have said unto you:” and if thou wouldst also know Him as a Teacher, bethink thyself of the Master, when He saith, “One is your Master, even Christ.”1352 Furthermore, of the Holy Spirit, whom thou hast just been told of as a Teacher in the words, “He shall 1349 Eam [Trinitatem] distincte audire, inseparabiliter intelligere. 1350 Ps. ii. 7. 1351 Chap. vi. 45. 1352 Matt. xxiii. 10. teach you all things,” listen to Him also speaking, where thou readest in the Acts of the Apostles, that the Holy Spirit said to the blessed Peter, “Go with them, for I have sent them.”1353 The whole Trinity, therefore, both speaketh and teacheth: but were it not also brought before us in its individual personality, it would certainly altogether surpass the power of human weakness to comprehend it. For as it is altogether inseparable in itself, it could never be known as the Trinity, were it always spoken of inseparably; for when we speak of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we certainly do not pronounce them simultaneously, and yet in themselves they cannot be else than simultaneous. But when He added, “He will bring to your remembrance,” we ought also to understand that we are commanded not to forget that these pre-eminently salutary admonitions are part of that grace which the Holy Spirit brings to our remembrance.

3. “Peace,” He said, “I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” It is here we read in the prophet, “Peace upon peace:” peace He leaves with us when going away, His own peace He will give us when He cometh in the end. Peace He leaveth with us in this world, His own peace He will give us in the world to come. His own peace He leaveth with us, and abiding therein we conquer the enemy. His own peace He will give us when, with no more enemies to fight, we shall reign as kings. Peace He leaveth with us, that here also we may love one another: His own peace will He give us, where we shall be beyond the possibility of dissension. Peace He leaveth with us, that we may not judge one another of what is secret to each, while here on earth: His own peace will He give us, when He “will make manifest the counsels of the heart; and then shall every man have praise of God.”1354 And yet in Him and from Him it is that we have peace, whether that which He leaveth with us when going to the Father, or that which He will give us when we ourselves are brought by Him to the Father. And what is it He leaveth with us, when ascending from us, save His own presence, which He never withdraweth? For He Himself is our peace who hath made both one.1355 It is He, therefore, that becomes our peace, both when we believe that He is, and when we see Him as He is.1356 For if, so long as we are in this corruptible body that burdens the soul, and are walking by faith, not by sight, He forsaketh not those who are sojourning at a distance from Himself;1357 how much more, when we have attained to that sight, shall He fill us with Himself?

4. But why is it that, when He said, “Peace I leave with you,” He did not add, “my;” but when He said, “I give unto you,” He there made use of it? Is “my” to be understood even 1353 Acts x. 20. 1354 1 Cor. iv. 5. 1355 Eph. ii. 14. 1356 1 John iii. 2. 1357 2 Cor. v. 6, 7. where it is not expressed, on the ground that what is expressed once may have a reference to both? Or may it not be that here also we have some underlying truth that has to be asked and sought for, and opened up to those who knock thereat? For what, if by His own peace He meant such to be understood as that which He possesses Himself? whereas the peace, which He leaves us in this world, may more properly be termed our peace than His. For He, who is altogether without sin, has no elements of discord in Himself; while the peace we possess, meanwhile, is such that in the midst of it we have still to be saying, “Forgive us our debts.”1358 A certain kind of peace, accordingly, we do possess, inasmuch as we delight in the law of God after the inward man: but it is not a full peace, for we see another law in our members warring against the law of our mind.1359 In the same way we have peace in our relations with one another, just because, in mutually loving, we have a mutual confidence in one another: but no more is such a peace as that complete, for we see not the thoughts of one another’s hearts; and we have severally better or worse opinions in certain respects of one another than is warranted by the reality. And so that peace, although left us by Him, is our peace: for were it not from Him, we should not be possessing it, such as it is; but such is not the peace He has Himself. And if we keep what we received to the end, then such as He has shall we have, when we shall have no elements of discord of our own, and we shall have no secrets hid from one another in our hearts. But I am not ignorant that these words of the Lord may be taken so as to seem only a repetition of the same idea, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you:” so that after saying “peace,” He only repeated it in saying “my peace;” and what He had meant in saying “I leave with you,” He simply repeated in saying “I give unto you.” Let each one understand it as he pleases; but it is my delight, as I believe it is yours also, my beloved brethren, to keep such hold of that peace here, where our hearts are making common cause against the adversary, that we may be ever longing for the peace which there will be no adversary to disturb.

5. But when the Lord proceeded to say, “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you,” what else does He mean but, Not as those give who love the world, give I unto you? For their aim in giving themselves peace is that, exempt from the annoyance of lawsuits and wars, they may find enjoyment, not in God, but in the friendship of the world; and although they give the righteous peace, in ceasing to persecute them, there can be no true peace where there is no real harmony, because their hearts are at variance. For as one is called a consort who unites his lot (sortem) with another, so may he be termed concordant whose heart has entered into a similar union.1360 Let us, therefore, beloved, with whom Christ leaveth peace, and to whom He giveth His own peace, not after the world’s way, but in a way worthy of 1358 Matt. vi. 12. 1359 Rom. vii. 22, 23. 1360 Consors dicitur, qui sortem jungit—concors dicendus, qui corda jungit. Him by whom the world was made, that we should be of one heart with Himself, having our hearts run into one, that this one heart, set on that which is above, may escape the corruption of the earth.

1. We have just heard, brethren, these words of the Lord, which He addressed to His disciples: “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come unto you: if ye loved me, ye would surely rejoice, because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater than I.” Their hearts might have become filled with trouble and fear, simply because of His going away from them, even though intending to return; lest, possibly, in the very interval of the shepherd’s absence, the wolf should make an onset on the flock. But as God, He abandoned not those from whom He departed as man: and Christ Himself is at once both man and God. And so He both went away in respect of His visible humanity, and remained as regards His Godhead: He went away as regards the nature which is subject to local limitations, and remained in respect of that which is ubiquitous. Why, then, should their heart be troubled and afraid, when His quitting their eyesight was of such a kind as to leave unaltered His presence in their heart? Although even God, who has no local bounds to His presence, may depart from the hearts of those who turn away from Him, not with their feet, but their moral character; just as He comes to such as turn to Him, not with their faces, but in faith, and approach Him in the spirit, and not in the flesh. But that they might understand that it was only in respect of His human nature that He said, “I go and come to you,” He went on to say, “If ye loved me, ye would surely rejoice, because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater than I.” And so, then, in that very respect wherein the Son is not equal to the Father, in that was He to go to the Father, just as from Him is He hereafter to come to judge the quick and the dead: while in so far as the Only-begotten is equal to Him that begat, He never withdraws from the Father; but with Him is everywhere perfectly equal in that Godhead which knows of no local limitations. For “being as He was in the form of God,” as the apostle says, “He thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” For how could that nature be robbery, which was His, not by usurpation, but by birth? “But He emptied Himself, taking upon Him the form of a servant;” 1361 and so, not losing the former, but assuming the latter, and emptying Himself in that very respect wherein He stood forth before us here in a humbler state than that wherein He still remained with the Father. For there was the accession of a servant-form, with no recession of the divine: in the assumption of the one there was no consumption of the other. In reference to the one He says, “The Father is greater than I;” but because of the other, “I and my Father are one.” 1362

1. Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, had said unto His disciples, “If ye loved me, ye would surely rejoice, because I go unto the Father; for the Father is greater than I.” And that He so spake in His servant-form, and not in that of God, wherein He is equal with the Father, is well known to faith as it resides in the minds of the pious, not as it is feigned by the scornful and senseless. And then He added, “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” What can He mean by this, when the fact rather is, that a man ought, before it comes to pass, to believe that which demands his belief? For it forms the very encomium of faith when that which is believed is not seen. For what greatness is there in believing what is seen, as in those words of the same Lord, when, in reproving a disciple, He said, “Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed; blessed are they that see not, and yet believe.”1366 And I hardly know whether any one can be said to believe what he sees; for this same faith is thus defined in the epistle addressed to the Hebrews: “Now faith is the substance of those that hope,1367 the assurance1368 of things not seen.” Accordingly, if faith is in things that are believed, and that, too, in things which are not seen,1369 what mean these words of the Lord, “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe”? Ought He not rather to have said, And now I have told you before it come to pass, that ye may believe what, when it is come to pass, ye shall see? For even he who was told, “Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed,” did not believe only what he saw; but he saw one thing, and believed another: for he saw Him as man, and believed Him to be God. He perceived and touched the living flesh, which he had seen in the act of dying, and he believed in the Deity infolded in that flesh. And so he believed with the mind what he did not see, by the help of that which was apparent to his bodily senses. But though we may be said to believe what we see, just as every one says that he believes his own eyes, yet that is not to be mistaken for the faith which is built up by God in our souls; but from things that are seen, we are brought to believe in those which are invisible. Wherefore, beloved, in the passage before us, when our Lord says, “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe;” by the words, “when it is come to pass,” He certainly means, that they would yet see Him after His death, alive, and ascending to His Father; at the sight of which they should then be compelled to believe that He was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God, seeing He 1366 Chap. xx. 29. 1367 Text, sperantium, although many mss. have sperandorum, or sperandarum, “things hoped for.” 1368 Convictio. 1369 Heb. xi. 1. could do such a thing, even after predicting it, and also could predict it before He did it: and this they should then believe, not with a new, but with an augmented faith; or at least with a faith that had been impaired1370 by His death, and was now repaired1371 by His resurrection. For it was not that they had not previously also believed Him to be the Son of God, but when His own predictions were actually fulfilled in Him, that faith, which was still weak at the time of His here speaking to them, and at the time of His death almost ceased to exist, sprang up again into new life and increased vigor.

2. But what says He next? “Hereafter I will not talk much with you; for the prince of this world cometh;” and who is that, but the devil? “And hath nothing in me;” that is to say, no sin at all. For by such words He points to the devil, as the prince, not of His creatures, but of sinners, whom He here designates by the name of this world. And as often as the name of the world is used in a bad sense, He is pointing only to the lovers of such a world; of whom it is elsewhere recorded, “Whosoever will be a friend of this world, becomes the enemy of God.”1372 Far be it from us, then, so to understand the devil as prince of the world, as if he wielded the government of the whole world, that is, of heaven and earth, and all that is in them; of which sort of world it was said, when we were lecturing on Christ the Word, “And the world was made by Him.”1373 The whole world therefore, from the highest heavens to the lowest earth, is subject to the Creator, not to the deserter; to the Redeemer, not to the destroyer; to the Deliverer, not to the enslaver; to the Teacher, not to the deceiver. And in what sense the devil is to be understood as the prince of the world, is still more clearly unfolded by the Apostle Paul, who, after saying, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood,” that is, against men, went on to say, “but against principalities and powers, and the world-rulers of this darkness.”1374 For in the very next word he has explained what he meant by “world,” when he added, “of this darkness;” so that no one, by the name of the world, should understand the whole creation, of which in no sense are fallen angels the rulers. “Of this darkness,” he says, that is, of the lovers of this world: of whom, nevertheless, there were some elected, not from any deserving of their own, but by the grace of God, to whom he says, “Ye were sometimes darkness; but now are ye light in the Lord.”1375 For all have been under the rulers of this darkness, that is, under the rulers of wicked men, or darkness, as it were, in subjection to darkness: but “thanks be to God, who hath delivered us,” says the same apostle, “from 1370 Defecta—refecta. 1371 Defecta—refecta. 1372 Jas. iv. 4. 1373 Chap. i. 10. 1374 Eph. vi. 12: Augustin, rectores mundi tenebrarum harum; original, τοὺς κοσμοκράτορας τοῦ σκότους τούτου. 1375 Eph. v. 8. the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”1376 And in Him the prince of this world, that is, of this darkness, had nothing; for neither did He come with sin as God, nor had His flesh any hereditary taint of sin in its procreation by the Virgin. And, as if it were said to Him, Why, then, dost Thou die, if Thou hast no sin to merit the punishment of death? He immediately added, “But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do: arise, let us go hence.” For He was sitting at table with those who were similarly occupied. But “let us go,” He said, and whither, but to the place where He, who had nothing in Him deserving of death, was to be delivered up to death? But He had the Father’s commandment to die, as the very One of whom it had been foretold, “Then I paid for that which I took not away;”1377 and so appointed to pay death to the full, while owing it nothing, and to redeem us from the death that was our due. For Adam had seized on sin as a prey, when, deceived, he presumptuously stretched forth his hand to the tree, and attempted to invade the incommunicable name of that Godhead which was disallowed him, and with which the Son of God was endowed by nature, and not by robbery.

1. This passage of the Gospel, brethren, where the Lord calls Himself the vine, and His disciples the branches, declares in so many words that the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,1378 is the head of the Church, and that we are His members. For as the vine and its branches are of one nature, therefore, His own nature as God being different from ours, He became man, that in Him human nature might be the vine, and we who also are men might become branches thereof. What mean, then, the words, “I am the true vine”? Was it to the literal vine, from which that metaphor was drawn, that He intended to point them by the addition of “true”? For it is by similitude, and not by any personal propriety, that He is thus called a vine; just as He is also termed a sheep, a lamb, a lion, a rock, a cornerstone, and other names of a like kind, which are themselves rather the true ones, from which these are drawn as similitudes, not as realities. But when He says, “I am the true vine,” it is to distinguish Himself, doubtless, from that vine to which the words are addressed: “How art thou turned into sourness, 1379 as a strange vine?”1380 For how could that be a true vine which was expected to bring forth grapes and brought forth thorns?1381

2. “I am,” He says, “the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, He taketh away; and every one that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” Are, then, the husbandman and the vine one? Christ is the vine in the same sense as when He said, “The Father is greater than I;”1382 but in that sense wherein He said, “I and my Father are one,” He is also the husbandman. And yet not such a one as those, whose whole service is confined to external labor; but such, that He also supplies the increase from within. “For neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” But Christ is certainly God, for the Word was God; and so He and the Father are one: and if the Word was made flesh,—that which He was not before,—He nevertheless still remains what He was. And still more, after saying of the Father, as of the husbandman, that He taketh away the fruitless branches, and pruneth 1378 1 Tim. ii. 5. 1379 Hebrew סוּרֵי , pass. part. of רוּס , to depart [from God], and so, perhaps, “stragglers,” i.e. “straggling branches of [a strange vine];” or, as in English version, “degenerate branches,” rather than as in text, where Augustin gives, in amaritudinem, vitis aliena, following the LXX., which reads, “εἰς πικρίας ἡ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀλλοτρία.” The Vulgate is better: in pravum, vinea aliena.—Tr. 1380 Jer. ii. 21. 1381 Isa. v. 4. 1382 Chap. xiv. 28. the fruitful, that they may bring forth more fruit, He straightway points to Himself as also the purger of the branches, when He says, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” Here, you see, He is also the pruner of the branches—a work which belongs to the husbandman, and not to the vine; and more than that, He maketh the branches His workmen. For although they give not the increase, they afford some help; but not of themselves: “For without me,” He says, “ye can do nothing.” And listen, also, to their own confession: “What, then, is Apollos, and what is Paul? but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. I have planted, Apollos watered.” And this, too, “as the Lord gave to every man;” and so not of themselves. In that, however, which follows, “but God gave the increase,”1383 He works not by them, but by Himself; for work like that exceeds the lowly capacity of man, transcends the lofty powers of angels, and rests solely and entirely in the hands of the Triune Husbandman. “Now ye are clean,” that is, clean, and yet still further to be cleansed. For, had they not been clean, they could not have borne fruit; and yet every one that beareth fruit is purged by the husbandman, that he may bring forth more fruit. He bears fruit because he is clean; and to bear more, he is cleansed still further. For who in this life is so clean as not to be in need of still further and further cleansing? seeing that, “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness;” to cleanse in very deed the clean, that is, the fruitful, that they may be so much the more fruitful, as they have been made the cleaner.

3. “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Why does He not say, Ye are clean through the baptism wherewith ye have been washed, but “through the word which I have spoken unto you,” save only that in the water also it is the word that cleanseth? Take away the word, and the water is neither more nor less than water. The word is added to the element, and there results the Sacrament, as if itself also a kind of visible word. For He had said also to the same effect, when washing the disciples’ feet, “He that is washed needeth not, save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.”1384 And whence has water so great an efficacy, as in touching the body to cleanse the soul, save by the operation of the word; and that not because it is uttered, but because it is believed? For even in the word itself the passing sound is one thing, the abiding efficacy another. “This is the word of faith which we preach,” says the apostle, “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is the Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”1385 Accordingly, we read in the Acts of the 1383 1 Cor. iii. 5–7. 1384 Chap. xiii. 10. 1385 Rom. x. 10. Apostles, “Purifying their hearts by faith;”1386 and, says the blessed Peter in his epistle, “Even as baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer1387 of a good conscience.” “This is the word of faith which we preach,” whereby baptism, doubtless, is also consecrated, in order to its possession of the power to cleanse. For Christ, who is the vine with us, and the husbandman with the Father, “loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.” And then read the apostle, and see what he adds: “That He might sanctify it, cleansing it with the washing of water by the word.”1388 The cleansing, therefore, would on no account be attributed to the fleeting and perishable element, were it not for that which is added, “by the word.” This word of faith possesses such virtue in the Church of God, that through the medium of him who in faith presents, and blesses, and sprinkles it, He cleanseth even the tiny infant, although itself unable as yet with the heart to believe unto righteousness, and to make confession with the mouth unto salvation. All this is done by means of the word, whereof the Lord saith, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.”

1. Jesus called Himself the vine, and His disciples the branches, and His Father the husbandman; whereon we have already discoursed as we were able. But in the present passage, while still speaking of Himself as the vine, and of His branches, or, in other words, of the disciples, He said, “Abide in me, and I in you.” They are not in Him in the same kind of way that He is in them. And yet both ways tend to their advantage, and not to His. For the relation of the branches to the vine is such that they contribute nothing to the vine, but from it derive their own means of life; while that of the vine to the branches is such that it supplies their vital nourishment, and receives nothing from them. And so their having Christ abiding in them, and abiding themselves in Christ, are in both respects advantageous, not to Christ, but to the disciples. For when the branch is cut off, another may spring up from the living root; but that which is cut off cannot live apart from the root.

2. And then He proceeds to say: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.” A great encomium on grace, my brethren,—one that will instruct the souls of the humble, and stop the mouths of the proud. Let those now answer it, if they dare, who, ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. 1389 Let the self-complacent answer it, who think they have no need of God for the performance of good works. Fight they not against such a truth, those men of corrupt mind, reprobate concerning the faith,1390 whose reply is only full of impious talk, when they say: It is of God that we have our existence as men, but it is of ourselves that we are righteous? What is it you say, you who deceive yourselves, and, instead of establishing freewill, cast it headlong down from the heights of its self-elevation through the empty regions of presumption into the depths of an ocean grave? Why, your assertion that man of himself worketh righteousness, that is the height of your self-elation. But the Truth contradicts you, and declares, “The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine.” Away with you now over your giddy precipices, and, without a spot whereon to take your stand, vapor away at your windy talk. These are the empty regions of your presumption. But look well at what is tracking your steps, and, if you have any sense remaining, let your hair stand on end. For whoever imagines that he is bearing fruit of himself is not in the vine, and he that is not in the vine is not in Christ, and he that is not in Christ is not a Christian. Such are the ocean depths into which you have plunged.

1. The Saviour, in thus speaking to the disciples, commends still more and more the grace whereby we are saved, when He says, “Herein is my Father glorified,1394 that ye bear very much fruit, and be made my disciples.” Whether we say glorified, or made bright, both are the rendering given us of one Greek verb, namely doxazein (δοξάζειν). For what is doxa (δόξα) in Greek, is in Latin glory. I have thought it worth while to mention this, because the apostle says, “If Abraham was justified by works, he hath glory, but not before God.”1395 For this is the glory before God, whereby God, and not man, is glorified, when he is justified, not by works, but by faith, so that even his doing well is imparted to him by God; just as the branch, as I have stated above,1396 cannot bear fruit of itself. For if herein God the Father is glorified, that we bear much fruit, and be made the disciples of Christ, let us not credit our own glory therewith, as if we had it of ourselves. For of Him is such a grace, and accordingly therein the glory is not ours, but His. Hence also, in another passage, after saying, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works;” to keep them from the thought that such good works were of themselves, He immediately added, “and may glorify your Father who is in heaven.”1397 For herein is the Father glorified, that we bear much fruit, and be made the disciples of Christ. And by whom are we so made, but by Him whose mercy hath forestalled us? For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.1398

2. “As the Father hath loved me,” He says, “so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.” Here, then, you see, is the source of our good works. For whence should we have them, were it not that faith worketh by love?1399 And how should we love, were it not that we were first loved? With striking clearness is this declared by the same evangelist in his epistle: “We love God because He first loved us.”1400 But when He says, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you,” He indicates no such equality between our nature and His as there is between Himself and the Father, but the grace whereby the Mediator between God and men 1394 Clarificatus, literally, “clarified,” or made bright, clear, to men’s eyes. See immediately afterwards in text. 1395 Rom. iv. 2. 1396 Tract. LXXXI. sec. 2. 1397 Matt. v. 16. 1398 Eph. ii. 10. 1399 Gal. v. 6. 1400 1 John iv. 19. is the man Christ Jesus.1401 For He is pointed out as Mediator when He says, “The Father— me, and I—you.” For the Father, indeed, also loveth us, but in Him; for herein is the Father glorified, that we bear fruit in the vine, that is, in the Son, and so be made His disciples.

3. “Continue ye,” He says, “in my love.” How shall we continue? Listen to what follows: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love.” Love brings about the keeping of His commandments; but does the keeping of His commandments bring about love? Who can doubt that it is love which precedes? For he has no true ground for keeping the commandments who is destitute of love. And so, in saying, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love,” He shows not the source from which love springs, but the means whereby it is manifested. As if He said, Think not that ye abide in my love if ye keep not my commandments; for it is only if ye have kept them that ye shall abide. In other words, it will thus be made apparent that ye shall abide in my love if ye keep my commandments. So that no one need deceive himself by saying that he loveth Him, if he keepeth not His commandments. For we love Him just in the same measure as we keep His commandments; and the less we keep them, the less we love. And although, when He saith, “Continue ye in my love,” it is not apparent what love He spake of; whether the love we bear to Him, or that which He bears to us: yet it is seen at once in the previous clause. For He had there said, “So have I loved you;” and to these words He immediately adds, “Continue ye in my love:” accordingly, it is that love which He bears to us. What, then, do the words mean, “Continue ye in my love,” but just, continue ye in my grace? And what do these mean, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love,” but, hereby shall ye know that ye shall abide in the love which I bear to you, if ye keep my commandments? It is not, then, for the purpose of awakening His love to us that we first keep His commandments; but this, that unless He loves us, we cannot keep His commandments. This is a grace which lies all disclosed to the humble, but is hid from the proud.

4. But what are we to make of that which follows: “Even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in His love”? Here also He certainly intended us to understand that fatherly love wherewith He was loved of the Father. For this was what He has just said, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you;” and then to these He added the words, “Continue ye in my love;” in that, doubtless, wherewith I have loved you. Accordingly, when He says also of the Father, “I abide in His love,” we are to understand it of that love which was borne Him by the Father. But then, in this case also, is that love which the Father bears to the Son referable to the same grace as that wherewith we are loved of the Son: seeing that we on our part are sons, not by nature, but by grace; while the Only-begotten is so by nature and not by grace? Or is this even in the Son Himself to be referred to His condition as man? Certainly so. For in saying, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you,” He pointed 1401 1 Tim. ii. 5. to the grace that was His as Mediator. For Christ Jesus is the Mediator between God and men, not in respect to His Godhead, but in respect to His manhood.1402 And certainly it is in reference to this His human nature that we read, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and age, and in favor grace with God and men.”1403 In harmony, therefore, with this, we may rightly say that while human nature belongs not to the nature of God, yet such human nature does by grace belong to the person of the only-begotten Son of God; and that by grace so great, that there is none greater, yea, none that even approaches equality. For there were no merits that preceded that assumption of humanity, but all His merits began with that very assumption. The Son, therefore, abideth in the love wherewith the Father hath loved Him, and so hath kept His commandments. For what are we to think of Him even as man, but that God is His lifter up?1404 for the Word was God, the Only-begotten, co-eternal with Him that begat; but that He might be given to us as Mediator, by grace ineffable, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.1405

1. You have just heard, beloved, the Lord saying to His disciples, “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might be in you, and that your joy might be full.” And what else is Christ’s joy in us, save that He is pleased to rejoice over us? And what is this joy of ours which He says is to be made full, but our having fellowship with Him? On this account He had said to the blessed Peter, “If I wash thee not, thou shall have no part with me.”1406 His joy, therefore, in us is the grace He hath bestowed upon us: and that is also our joy. But over it He rejoiced even from eternity, when He chose us before the foundation of the world.1407 Nor can we rightly say that His joy was not full; for God’s joy was never at any time imperfect. But that joy of His was not in us: for we, in whom it could be, had as yet no existence; and even when our existence commenced, it began not to be in Him. But in Him it always was, who in the infallible truth of His own foreknowledge rejoiced that we should yet be His own. Accordingly, He had a joy over us that was already full, when He rejoiced in foreknowing and foreordaining us: and as little could there be any fear intermingling in that joy of His, lest there should be any possible failure in what He foreknew would be done by Himself. Nor, when He began to do what He foreknew that He would do, was there any increase to His joy as the expression of His blessedness; otherwise His making of us must have added to His blessedness. Be such a supposition, brethren, far from our thoughts; for the blessedness of God was neither less without us, nor became greater because of us. His joy, therefore, over our salvation, which was always in Him, when He foreknew and foreordained us, began to be in us when He called us; and this joy we properly call our own, as by it we, too, shall yet be blessed: but this joy, as it is ours, increases and advances, and presses onward perseveringly to its own completion. Accordingly, it has its beginning in the faith of the regenerate, and its completion in the reward when they rise again. Such is my opinion of the purport of the words, “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might be in you, and that your joy might be made full:” that mine “might be in you;” that yours “might be made full.” For mine was always full, even before ye were called, when ye were foreknown as those whom I was afterwards to call; but it finds its place in you also, when ye are transformed into that which I have foreknown regarding you. And “that yours may be full:” for ye shall be blessed, what ye are not as yet; just as ye are now created, who had no existence before.

2. “This,” He says, “is my injunction, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” Whether we call it injunction or commandment,1408 both are the rendering of the same 1406 Chap. xiii. 8. 1407 Eph. i. 4. 1408 Præceptum, sive mandatum. Greek word, entolé (ἐντολή). But He had already made this same announcement on a former occasion, when, as ye ought to remember, I repounded it to you to the best of my ability.1409 For this is what He says there, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one an- other; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”1410 And so the repetition of this commandment is its commendation: only that there He said, “A new commandment I give unto you;” and here, “This is my commandment:” there, as if there had been no such commandment before; and here, as if He had no other commandment to give them. But there it is spoken of as “new,” to keep us from persevering in our old courses; here, it is called “mine,” to keep us from treating it with contempt.

3. But when He said in this way here, “This is my commandment,” as if there were none else, what are we to think, my brethren? Is, then, the commandment about that love wherewith we love one another, His only one? Is there not also another that is still greater,— that we should love God? Or has God in very truth given us such a charge about love alone, that we have no need of searching for others? There are three things at least that the apostle commends when he says, “But now abide faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”1411 And although in charity, that is, in love, are comprehended the two commandments; yet it is here declared to be the greatest only, and not the sole one. Accordingly, what a host of commandments are given us about faith, what a multitude about hope! who is there that could collect them together, or suffice to number them? But let us ponder the words of the same apostle: “Love is the fullness of the law.”1412 And so, where there is love, what can be wanting? and where it is not, what is there that can possibly be profitable? The devil believes,1413 but does not love: no one loveth who doth not believe. One may, indeed, hope for pardon who does not love, but he hopes in vain; but no one can despair who loves. Therefore, where there is love, there of necessity will there be faith and hope; and where there is the love of our neighbor, there also of necessity will be the love of God. For he that loveth not God, how loveth he his neighbour as himself, seeing that he loveth not even himself? Such an one is both impious and iniquitous; and he that loveth iniquity, manifestly loveth not, but hateth his own soul.1414 Let us, therefore, be holding 1409 See Tract. LXV. 1410 Chap. xiii. 34. 1411 1 Cor. xiii. 13. 1412 Rom. xiii. 10. 1413 Jas. ii. 19. 1414 Ps. xi. 5. Augustin here, as usual, along with the Vulgate, follows the Septuagint in what is clearly a mistranslation of the Hebrew text, which is correctly rendered grammatically in our English version, though not exactly according to the Masoretic punctuation. שׂנְָֽאָה (fem.) shows that “his soul” is the subject, and not the object of the hatred.—Tr. fast to this precept of the Lord, to love one another; and then all else that is commanded we shall do, for all else we have contained in this. But this love is distinguished from that which men bear to one another as such; for in order to mark the distinction, it is added, “as I have loved you.” And wherefore is it that Christ loveth us, but that we may be fitted to reign with Christ? With this aim, therefore, let us also be loving one another, that we may manifest the difference of our love from that of others, who have no such motive in loving one another, because the love itself is wanting. But those whose mutual love has the possession of God Himself for its object, will truly love one another; and, therefore, even for the very purpose of loving one another, they love God. There is no such love as this in all men; for few have this motive for their love one to another, that God may be all in all. 1415

1. The Lord, beloved brethren, hath defined that fullness of love which we ought to bear to one another, when He said: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Inasmuch, then, as He had said before, “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you;” and appended to these words what you have just been hearing, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;” there follows from this as a consequence, what this same Evangelist John says in his epistle, “That as Christ laid down His life for us, even so we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren;”1416 loving one another in truth, as He hath loved us, who laid down His life for us. Such also is doubtless the meaning of what we read in the Proverbs of Solomon: “If thou sittest down to supper at the table of a ruler, consider wisely what is set before thee; and so put to thy hand, knowing that thou art bound to make similar preparations.”1417 For what is the table of the ruler, but that from which we take the body and blood of Him who laid down His life for us? And what is it to sit thereat, but to approach in humility? And what is it to consider intelligently what is set before thee, but worthily to reflect on the magnitude of the favor? And what is it, so to put to thy hand, as knowing that thou art bound to make similar preparations, but as I have already said, that, as Christ laid down His life for us, so we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren? For as the Apostle Peter also says, “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps.”1418 This is to make similar preparations. This it was that the blessed martyrs did in their burning love; and if we celebrate their memories in no mere empty form, and, in the banquet whereat they themselves were filled to the full, approach the table of the Lord, we must, as they did, be also ourselves making similar preparations. For on these very grounds we do not commemorate them at that table in the same way, as we do others who now rest in peace, as that we should also pray for them, but rather that they should do so for us, that we may cleave to their footsteps; because they have actually attained that fullness of love, than which, our Lord hath told us, there cannot be a greater. For such tokens of love they exhibited for their brethren, as they themselves had equally received at the table of the Lord.

2. But let us not be supposed to have so spoken as if on such grounds we might possibly arrive at an equality with Christ the Lord, if for His sake we have undergone witness-bearing even unto blood. He had power to lay down His life, and to take it again;1419 but we have 1416 1 John iii. 16. 1417 Prov. xxiii. 1, 2: see below, and also Tract. XLVII. sec. 2, note 4. 1418 1 Pet. ii. 21. 1419 Chap. x. 18. no power to live as long as we wish; and die we must, however unwilling: He, by dying, straightway slew death in Himself; we, by His death, are delivered from death: His flesh saw no corruption;1420 ours, after corruption, shall in the end of the world be clothed by Him with incorruption: He had no need of us, in order to work out our salvation; we, without Him, can do nothing: He gave Himself as the vine, to us the branches; we, apart from Him, can have no life. Lastly, although brethren die for brethren, yet no martyr’s blood is ever shed for the remission of the sins of brethren, as was the case in what He did for us; and in this respect He bestowed not on us aught for imitation, but something for congratulation. In as far, then, as the martyrs have shed their blood for the brethren, so far have they exhibited such tokens of love as they themselves perceived at the table of the Lord. (One might imitate Him in dying, but no one could, in redeeming.)1421 In all else, then, that I have said, although it is out of my power to mention everything, the martyr of Christ is far inferior to Christ Himself. But if any one shall set himself in comparison, I say, not with the power, but with the innocence of Christ, and (I would not say) in thinking that he is healing the sins of others, but at least that he has no sins of his own, even so far is his avidity overstepping the requirements of the method of salvation; it is a matter of considerable moment for him, only he attains not his desire. And well it is that he is admonished in that passage of the Proverbs, which immediately goes on to say, “But if thy greed is too great, be not desirous of his dainties; for it is better that thou take nothing thereof, than that thou shouldst take more than is befitting. For such things,” it is added, “have a life of deceit,” that is, of hypocrisy. For in asserting his own sinlessness, he cannot prove, but only pretend, that he is righteous. And so it is said, “For such have a deceiving life.” There is only One who could at once have human flesh and be free from sin. Appropriately are we commanded that which follows; and such a word and proverb is well adapted to human weakness, when it is said, “Lay not thyself out, seeing thou art poor, against him that is rich.” For the rich man is Christ, who was never obnoxious to punishment either through hereditary or personal debt and is righteous Himself, and justifies others. Lay not thyself out against Him, thou who art so poor, that thou art manifestly to the eyes of all the daily beggar that thou art in thy prayer for the remission of sins. “But keep thyself,” he says, “from thine own counsel” [“cease from thine own wisdom”—E.V.]. From what, but from this delusive presumption? For He, indeed, inasmuch as He is not only man but also God, can never be chargeable with evil. “For if thou turn thine eye upon Him, He will nowhere be visible.” “Thine eye,” that is, the human eye, wherewith thou distinguishest that which is human; “if thou turn it upon Him, He will 1420 Acts ii. 31. 1421 This parenthesized sentence is found, according to Migne, inserted here in six mss. In three others it occurs immediately before the second following sentence, beginning, “But if any one,” etc. In other mss. it is wanting; and Migne omits it from the text.—Tr. nowhere be visible,” because He cannot be seen with such organs of sight as are thine. “For He will provide Himself wings like an eagle’s, and will depart to the house of His overseer,” 1422 from which, at all events, He came to us, and found us not such as He Himself was who came. Let us therefore love one another, even as Christ hath loved us, and given Himself for us.1423 “For greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And let us be imitating Him in such a spirit of reverential obedience, that we shall never have the boldness to presume on a comparison between Him and ourselves.

1. When the Lord Jesus had commended the love which He manifested toward us in dying for us, and had said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” He added, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” What great condescension! when one cannot even be a good servant unless he do his lord’s commandments; the very means, which only prove men to be good servants, He wished to be those whereby His friends should be known. But the condescension, as I have termed it, is this, that the Lord condescends to call those His friends whom He knows to be His servants. For, to let us know that it is the duty of servants to yield obedience to their master’s commands, He actually in another place reproaches those who are servants, by saying, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?”1424 Accordingly, when ye say Lord, prove what you say by doing my commandments. Is it not to the obedient servant that He is yet one day to say, “Well done, thou good servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”?1425 One, therefore, who is a good servant, can be both servant and friend.

2. But let us mark what follows. “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.” How, then are we to understand the good servant to be both servant and friend, when He says, “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth”? He introduces the name of friend in such a way as to withdraw that of servant; not as if to include both in the one term, but in order that the one should succeed to the place vacated by the other. What does it mean? Is it this, that even in doing the Lord’s commandments we shall not be servants? Or this, that then we shall cease to be servants, when we have been good servants? And yet who can contradict the Truth, when He says, “Henceforth I call you not servants?” and shows why He said so: “For the servant,” He adds, “knoweth not what his lord doeth.” Is it that a good and tried servant is not likewise entrusted by his master with his secrets? What does He mean, then, by saying, “The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth”? Be it that “he knoweth not what he doeth,” is he ignorant also of what he commands? For if he were so, how can he serve? Or how is he a servant who does no service? And yet the Lord speaks thus: “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants.” Truly a marvellous statement! Seeing we cannot serve the Lord but by doing His commandments, how is it that in doing so we shall cease to be servants? If I be not a servant in doing His commandments, 1424 Luke vi. 46. 1425 Matt. xxv. 21. and yet cannot be in His service unless I so do, then, in my very service, I am no longer a servant.

3. Let us, brethren, let us understand, and may the Lord enable us to understand, and enable us also to do what we understand. And if we know this, we know of a truth what the Lord doeth; for it is only the Lord that so enables us, and by such means only do we attain to His friendship. For just as there are two kinds of fear, which produce two classes of fearers; so there are two kinds of service, which produce two classes of servants. There is a fear, which perfect love casteth out;1426 and there is another fear, which is clean, and endureth for ever.1427 The fear that lies not in love, the apostle pointed to when he said, “For ye have not received the spirit of service again to fear.”1428 But he referred to the clean fear when he said, “Be not high-minded, but fear.”1429 In that fear which love casteth out, there has also to be cast out the service along with it: for both were joined together by the apostle, that is, the service and the fear, when he said, “For ye have not received the spirit of service again to fear.” And it was the servant connected with this kind of service that the Lord also had in His eye when He said, “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.” Certainly not the servant characterized by the clean fear, to whom it is said, “Well done, thou good servant: enter thou into the joy of thy lord;” but the servant who is characterized by the fear which love casteth out, of whom He elsewhere saith, “The servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever.”1430 Since, therefore, He hath given us power to become the sons of God,1431 let us not be servants, but sons: that, in some wonderful and indescribable but real way, we may as servants have the power not to be servants; servants, indeed, with that clean fear which distinguishes the servant that enters into the joy of his lord, but not servants with the fear that has to be cast out, and which marketh him that abideth not in the house for ever. But let us bear in mind that it is the Lord that enableth us to serve so as not to be servants. And this it is that is unknown to the servant, who knoweth not what his Lord doeth; and who, when he doeth any good thing, is lifted up as if he did it himself, and not his Lord; and so, glories not in the Lord, but in himself, thereby deceiving himself, because glorying, as if he had not received.1432 But let us, beloved, in order that we may be the friends of the Lord, know what our Lord doeth. For it is He who makes us not only men, but also righteous, and not we ourselves. And who 1426 1 John iv. 18. 1427 Ps. xix. 9. 1428 Rom. viii. 15. 1429 Rom. xi. 20. 1430 Chap. viii. 35. 1431 Chap. i. 12. 1432 1 Cor. iv. 7. but He is the doer, in leading us to such a knowledge? For “we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”1433 Whatever good there is, is freely given by Him. And so because this also is good, by Him who graciously imparteth all good is this gift of knowing likewise bestowed; that, in respect of all good things whatever, he that glorieth may glory in the Lord.1434 But the words that follow, “But I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you,” are so profound, that we must by no means compress them within the limits of the present discourse, but leave them over till another.

1. It is a worthy subject of inquiry how these words of the Lord are to be understood, “But I have called you friends: for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” For who is there that dare affirm or believe that any man knoweth all things that the only-begotten Son hath heard of the Father; when there is no one that can comprehend even how He heareth any word of the Father, being as He is Himself the only Word of the Father? Nay more, is it not the case that a little afterwards, in this same discourse, which He delivered to the disciples between the Supper and His passion, He said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now”?1435 How, then, are we to understand that He made known unto the disciples all that He had heard of the Father, when there are many things that He saith not, just because He knows that they cannot bear them now? Doubtless what He is yet to do He says that He has done as the same Being who hath made those things which are yet to be.1436 For as He says by the prophet, “They pierced my hands and my feet,”1437 and not, They will yet pierce; but speaking as it were of the past, and yet predicting what was still in the future: so also in the passage before us He declares that He has made known to the disciples all, that He knows He will yet make known in that fullness of knowledge, whereof the apostle says, “But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” For in the same place he adds: “Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am known; and now through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face.”1438 For the same apostle also says that we have been saved by the washing of regeneration,1439 and yet declares in another place, “We are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is no hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”1440 To a similar purpose it is also said by his fellow-apostle Peter, “In whom, though now seeing Him not, ye believe; and in whom, when ye see Him, ye shall rejoice with a joy unspeakable and glorious: receiving the reward of faith, even the salvation of your souls.”1441 If, then, it is now the season of faith, and faith’s reward is the salvation of our souls; who, in that faith which worketh by love,1442 1435 Chap. xvi. 12. 1436 Isa. xlv. 11. 1437 Ps. xxii. 16. 1438 1 Cor. xiii. 10, 12. 1439 Tit. iii. 5. 1440 Rom. viii. 24, 25. 1441 1 Pet. i. 8, 9. 1442 Gal. v. 6. can doubt that the day must come to an end, and at its close the reward be received; not only the redemption of our body, whereof the Apostle Paul speaketh,1443 but also the salvation of our souls, as we are told by the Apostle Peter? For the felicity springing from both is at this present time, and in the existing state of mortality, a matter rather of hope than of actual possession. But this it concerns us to remember, that our outward man, to wit the body, is still decaying; but the inward, that is, the soul, is being renewed day by day.1444 Accordingly, while we are waiting for the immortality of the flesh and salvation of our souls in the future, yet with the pledge we have received, it may be said that we are saved already; so that knowledge of all things which the Only-begotten hath heard of the Father we are to regard as a matter of hope still lying in the future, although declared by Christ as something He had already imparted.

2. “Ye have not chosen me,” He says, “but I have chosen you.” Grace such as that is ineffable. For what were we so long as Christ had not yet chosen us, and we were therefore still destitute of love? For he who hath chosen Him, how can he love Him? Were we, think you, in that condition which is sung of in the psalm: “I had rather be an abject in the house of the Lord, than dwell in the tents of wickedness”?1445 Certainly not. What were we then, but sinful and lost? We had not yet come to believe on Him, in order to lead to His choosing us; for if it were those who already believed that He chose, then was He chosen Himself, prior to His choosing. But how could He say, “Ye have not chosen me,” save only because His mercy anticipated us?1446 Here surely is at fault the vain reasoning of those who defend the foreknowledge of God in opposition to His grace, and with this view declare that we were chosen before the foundation of the world,1447 because God foreknew that we should be good, but not that He Himself would make us good. So says not He, who declares, “Ye have not chosen me.” For had He chosen us on the ground that He foreknew that we should be good, then would He also have foreknown that we would not be the first to make choice of Him. For in no other way could we possibly be good: unless, forsooth, one could be called good who has never made good his choice. What was it then that He chose in those who were not good? For they were not chosen because of their goodness, inasmuch as they could not be good without being chosen. Otherwise grace is no more grace, if we maintain the priority of merit. Such, certainly, is the election of grace, whereof the apostle says: “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace.” To which he adds: “And if by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more 1443 Rom. viii. 23. 1444 2 Cor. iv. 16. 1445 Ps. lxxxiv. 10. 1446 Ps. lix. 10. 1447 Eph. i. 4. grace.” 1448 Listen, thou ungrateful one, listen: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” Not that thou mayest say, I am chosen because I already believed. For if thou wert believing in Him, then hadst thou already chosen Him. But listen: “Ye have not chosen me.” Not that thou mayest say, Before I believed I was already doing good works, and therefore was I chosen. For what good work can be prior to faith, when the apostle says, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin”? 1449 What, then, are we to say on hearing such words, “Ye have not chosen me,” but that we were evil, and were chosen in order that we might be good through the grace of Him who chose us? For it is not by grace, if merit preceded: but it is of grace: and therefore that grace did not find, but effected the merit.

3. See then, beloved, how it is that He chooseth not the good, but maketh those whom He has chosen good. “I have chosen you,” He saith, “and appointed you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and [that] your fruit should remain.” And is not that the fruit, whereof He had already said, “Without me ye can do nothing”?1450 He hath chosen therefore, and appointed that we should go and bring forth fruit; and no fruit, accordingly, had we to induce His choice of us. “That ye should go,” He said, “and bring forth fruit.” We go to bring forth, and He Himself is the way wherein we go, and wherein He hath appointed us to go. And so His mercy hath anticipated us in all. “And that your fruit,” He saith, “should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it you.” Accordingly let love remain; for He Himself is our fruit. And this love lies at present in longing desire, not yet in fullness of enjoyment; and whatsoever with that longing desire we shall ask in the name of the only-begotten Son, the Father giveth us. But what is not expedient for our salvation to receive, let us not imagine that we ask that in the Saviour’s name: but we ask in the name of the Saviour only that which really belongs to the way of salvation.

1. In the Gospel lesson which precedes this one, the Lord had said: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and [that] your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it you.” On these words you remember that we have already discoursed, as the Lord enabled us. But here, that is, in the succeeding lesson which you have heard read, He says: “These things I command you, that ye love one another.” And thereby we are to understand that this is our fruit, of which He had said, “I have chosen you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and [that] your fruit should remain.” And what He subjoined, “That whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it you,” He will certainly give us if we love one another; seeing that this very thing He has also given us, in choosing us when we had no fruit, because we had chosen Him not; and appointing us that we should bring forth fruit,—that is, that we should love one another,—a fruit that we cannot have apart from Him, just as the branches can do nothing apart from the vine. Our fruit, therefore, is charity, which the apostle explains to be, “Out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.”1451 So love we one another, and so love we God. For it would be with no true love that we loved one another, if we loved not God. For every one loves his neighbor as himself if he loves God; and if he loves not God, he loves not himself. For on these two commandments of love hang all the law and the prophets:1452 this is our fruit. And it is in reference, therefore, to such fruit that He gives us commandment when He says, “These things I command you, that ye love one another.” In the same way also the Apostle Paul, when wishing to commend the fruit of the Spirit in opposition to the deeds of the flesh, posited this as his principle, saying, “The fruit of the Spirit is love;” and then, as if springing from and bound up in this principle, he wove the others together, which are “joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”1453 For who can truly rejoice who loves not good as the source of his joy? Who can have true peace, if he have it not with one whom he truly loves? Who can be long-enduring through persevering continuance in good, save through fervent love? Who can be kind, if he love not the person he is aiding? Who can be good, if he is not made so by loving? Who can be sound in the faith, without that faith which worketh by love? Whose meekness can be beneficial in character, if not regulated by love? And who will abstain from that which is debasing, if he love not that which dignifies? Appropriately, therefore, does the good Master so frequently commend 1451 1 Tim. i. 5. 1452 Matt. xxii. 40. 1453 Gal. v. 22. love, as the only thing needing to be commended, without which all other good things can be of no avail, and which cannot be possessed without bringing with it those other good things that make a man truly good.

2. But alongside of this love we ought also patiently to endure the hatred of the world. For it must of necessity hate those whom it perceives recoiling from that which is loved by itself. But the Lord supplies us with special consolation from His own case, when, after saying, “These things I command you, that ye love one another,” He added, “If the world hate you, know that it hated me before [it hated] you.” Why then should the member exalt itself above the head? Thou refusest to be in the body if thou art unwilling to endure the hatred of the world along with the Head. “If ye were of the world,” He says, “the world would love its own.” He says this, of course, of the whole Church, which, by itself, He frequently also calls by the name of the world: as when it is said, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.”1454 And this also: “The Son of man came not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”1455 And John says in his epistle: “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also [for those] of the whole world.”1456 The whole world then is the Church, and yet the whole world hateth the Church. The world therefore hateth the world, the hostile that which is reconciled, the condemned that which is saved, the polluted that which is cleansed.

3. But that world which God is in Christ reconciling unto Himself, which is saved by Christ, and has all its sins freely pardoned by Christ, has been chosen out of the world that is hostile, condemned, and defiled. For out of that mass, which has all perished in Adam, are formed the vessels of mercy, whereof that world of reconciliation is composed, that is hated by the world which belongeth to the vessels of wrath that are formed out of the same mass and fitted to destruction.1457 Finally, after saying, “If ye were of the world, the world would love its own,” He immediately added, “But because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” And so these men were themselves also of that world, and, that they might no longer be of it, were chosen out of it, through no merit of their own, for no good works of theirs had preceded; and not by nature, which through free-will had become totally corrupted at its source: but gratuitously, that is, of actual grace. For He who chose the world out of the world, effected for Himself, instead of finding, what He should choose: for “there is a remnant saved according to the election 1454 2 Cor. v. 19. 1455 John iii. 17. 1456 1 John ii. 1, 2. 1457 Rom. ix. 21, 23. of grace. And if by grace,” he adds, “then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.”1458

4. But if we are asked about the love which is borne to itself by that world of perdition which hateth the world of redemption; we reply, it loveth itself, of course, with a false love, and not with a true. And hence, it loves itself falsely, and hates itself truly. For he that loveth wickedness, hateth his own soul.1459 And yet it is said to love itself, inasmuch as it loves the wickedness that makes it wicked; and, on the other hand, it is said to hate itself, inasmuch as it loves that which causes it injury. It hates, therefore, the true nature that is in it, and loves the vice: it hates what it is, as made by the goodness of God, and loves what has been wrought in it by free-will. And hence also, if we rightly understand it, we are at once forbidden and commanded to love it: thus, we are forbidden, when it is said to us, “Love not the world;”1460 and we are commanded, when it is said to us, “Love your enemies.”1461 These constitute the world that hateth us. And therefore we are forbidden to love in it that which it loves in itself; and we are enjoined to love in it what it hates in itself, namely, the workmanship of God, and the various consolations of His goodness. For we are forbidden to love the vice that is in it, and enjoined to love the nature, while it loves the vice in itself, and hates the nature: so that we may both love and hate it in a right manner, whereas it loves and hates itself perversely.

1. The Lord, in exhorting His servants to endure with patience the hatred of the world, proposes to them no greater and better example than His own; seeing that, as the Apostle Peter says, “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps.”1462 And if we really do so, we do it by His assistance, who said, “Without me ye can do nothing.” But further, to those to whom He had already said, “If the world hate you, know that it hated me before [it hated] you,” He now also says in the word you have just been hearing, when the Gospel was read, “Remember my word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.” Now in saying, “The servant is not greater than his lord,” does He not clearly indicate how He would have us understand what He had said above, “Henceforth I call you not servants”?1463 For, you see, He calleth them servants. For what else can the words imply, “The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you”? It is clear, therefore, that when it is said, “Henceforth I call you not servants,” He is to be understood as speaking of that servant1464 who abideth not in the house for ever,1465 but is characterized by the fear which love casteth out;1466 whereas, when it is here said, “The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you,” that servant is meant who is distinguished by the clean fear which endureth for ever.1467 For this is the servant who is yet to hear, “Well done, thou good servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”1468

2. “But all these things,” He says, “will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent me.” And what are “all these things” that “they will do,” but what He has just said, namely, that they will hate and persecute you, and despise your word? For if they kept not their word, and yet neither hated nor persecuted them; or if they even hated, but did not persecute them: it would not be all these things that they did. But “all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake,”—what else is that but to say, they will hate me in you, they will persecute me in you; and your word, just because it is mine, they will not keep? For “all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake:” not for 1462 1 Pet. ii. 21. 1463 Chap. xv. 15, xiii. 16. 1464 See above, Tract. LXXXV. sec. 3. 1465 Chap. viii. 35. 1466 1 John iv. 18. 1467 Ps. xix. 9. 1468 Matt. xxv. 21. yours, but mine. So much the more miserable, therefore, are those who do such things on account of that name, as those are blessed who suffer such things in its behalf: as He Himself elsewhere saith, “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake.”1469 For that is on my account, or “for my name’s sake:” because, as we are taught by the apostle, “He is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and santification, and redemption; that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”1470 For the wicked do such things to the wicked, but not for righteousness’ sake; and therefore both are alike miserable, those who do, and those who suffer them. The good also do such things to the wicked: where, although the former do so for righteousness’ sake, yet the latter suffer them not on the same behalf.

3. But some one says, If, when the wicked persecute the good for the name of Christ, the good suffer for righteousness’ sake, then surely it is for righteousness’ sake that the wicked do so to them; and if such is the case, then also, when the good persecute the wicked for righteousness’ sake, it is for righteousness’ sake likewise that the wicked suffer. For if the wicked can assail the good with persecution for the name of Christ, why cannot the wicked suffer persecution at the hands of the good on the same account; and what is that, but for righteousness’ sake? For if the good act not so on the same account as that on which the wicked suffer, because the good do so for righteousness’ sake, while the wicked suffer for unrighteousness, so then neither can the wicked act so on the same account as that for which the good suffer, because the wicked do so by unrighteousness, while the good suffer for righteousness’ sake. And how then will that be true, “All these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake,” when the former do it not for the name of Christ, that is, for righteousness’ sake, but because of their own iniquity? Such a question is solved in this way, if only we understand the words, “All these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake,” as referring entirely to the righteous, as if it had been said, All these things will ye suffer at their hands for my name’s sake, so that the words, “they will do unto you,” are equivalent to these, Ye will suffer at their hands. But if “for my name’s sake” is to be taken as if He had said, For my name’s sake which they hate in you, so also may the other be taken for that righteousness’ sake which they hate in you; and in this way the good, when they institute persecution against the wicked, may be rightly said to do so both for righteousness’ sake, in their love for which they persecute the wicked, and for that wickedness’ sake which they hate in the wicked themselves; and so also the wicked may be said to suffer both for the iniquity that is punished in their persons, and for the righteousness which is exercised in their punishment.

1. The Lord had said above to His disciples, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent me.” And if we inquire of whom He so spake, we find that He was led on to these words from what He had said before, “If the world hate you, know ye that it hated me before [it hated] you;” and now in adding, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin,” He more expressly pointed to the Jews. Of them, therefore, He also uttered the words that precede, for so does the context itself imply. For it is of the same parties that He said, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin;” of whom He also said, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also; but all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent me;” for it is to these words that He also subjoins the following: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.” The Jews, therefore, persecuted Christ, as the Gospel very clearly indicates, and Christ spake to the Jews, not to other nations; and it is they, therefore, that He meant to be understood by the world, that hateth Christ and His disciples; and, indeed, not those alone, but even these latter were shown by Him to belong to the same world. What, then, does He mean by the words, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin”? Was it that the Jews were without sin before Christ came to them in the flesh? Who, though he were the greatest fool, would say so? But it is some great sin, and not every sin, that He would have to be understood, as it were, under the general designation. For this is the sin wherein all sins are included; and whosoever is free from it, has all his sins forgiven him: and this it is, that they believed not on Christ, who came for the very purpose of enlisting their faith. From this sin, had He not come, they would certainly have been free. His advent has become as much fraught with destruction to unbelievers, as it is with salvation to those that believe; for He, the Head and Prince of the apostles, has Himself, as it were, become what they declared of themselves, “to some, indeed, the savour of life unto life; and to some the savor of death unto death.”1472

2. But when He went on to say, “But now they have no excuse for their sin,” some may be moved to inquire whether those to whom Christ neither came nor spake, have an excuse for their sin. For if they have not, why is it said here that these had none, on the very ground that He did come and speak to them? And if they have, have they it to the extent of thereby being barred from punishment, or of receiving it in a milder degree? To these inquiries, with the Lord’s help and to the best of my capacity, I reply, that such have an excuse, not 1472 2 Cor. ii. 16. for every one of their sins, but for this sin of not believing on Christ, inasmuch as He came not and spake not to them. But it is not in the number of such that those are to be included, to whom He came in the persons of His disciples, and to whom He spake by them, as He also does at present; for by His Church He has come, and by His Church He speaks to the Gentiles. For to this are to be referred the words that He spake, “He that receiveth you, receiveth me;”1473 and, “He that despiseth you, despiseth me.”1474 “Or would ye,” says the Apostle Paul, “have a proof of Him that speaketh in me, namely Christ.”1475

3. It remains for us to inquire, whether those who, prior to the coming of Christ in His Church to the Gentiles and to their hearing of His Gospel, have been, or are now being, overtaken by the close of this life, can have such an excuse? Evidently they can, but not on that account can they escape damnation. “For as many as have sinned without the law, shall also perish without the law; and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law.” 1476 And these words of the apostle, inasmuch as his saying, “they shall perish,” has a more terrible sound than when he says, “they shall be judged,” seem to show that such an excuse can not only avail them nothing, but even becomes an additional aggravation. For those that excuse themselves because they did not hear, “shall perish without the law.”

4. But it is also a worthy subject of inquiry, whether those who met the words they heard with contempt, and even with opposition, and that not merely by contradicting them, but also by persecuting in their hatred those from whom they heard them, are to be reckoned among those in regard to whom the words, “they shall be judged by the law,” convey somewhat of a milder sound. But if it is one thing to perish without the law, and another to be judged by the law; and the former is the heavier, the latter the lighter punishment: such, without a doubt, are not to have their place assigned in that lighter measure of punishment; for, so far from sinning in the law, they utterly refused to accept the law of Christ, and, as far as in them lay, would have had it altogether annihilated. But those that sin in the law, are such as are in the law, that is, who accept it, and confess that it is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good; 1477 but fail through infirmity in fulfilling what they cannot doubt is most righteously enjoined therein. These are they in regard to whose fate there may perhaps be some distinction made from the perdition of those who are without the law: and yet if the apostle’s words, “they shall be judged by the law,” are to be understood as meaning, they shall not perish, what a wonder if it were so! For his discourse was not about infidels and believers to lead him to say so, but about Gentiles and Jews, both of whom, certainly, 1473 Matt. x. 40. 1474 Luke x. 16. 1475 2 Cor. xiii. 3. 1476 Rom. ii. 12. 1477 Rom. vii. 12. if they find not salvation in that Saviour who came to seek that which was lost,1478 shall doubtless become the prey of perdition; although it may be said that some shall perish in a more terrible, others in a more mitigated sense; in other words, that some shall suffer a heavier, and others a lighter penalty in their perdition. For he is rightly said to perish as regards God, whoever is separated by punishment from that blessedness which He bestows on His saints, and the diversity of punishments is as great as the diversity of sins; but the mode thereof is accounted too deep by divine wisdom for human guessing to scrutinize or express. At all events, those to whom Christ came, and to whom He spake, have not, for their great sin of unbelief, any such excuse as may enable them to say, We saw not, we heard not: whether it be that such an excuse would not be sustained by Him whose judg ments are unsearchable, or whether it would, and that, if not for their entire deliverance from damnation, at least for its partial alleviation.

5. “He that hateth me,” He says, “hateth my Father also.” Here it may be said to us, Who can hate one whom he knows not? And certainly before saying, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin,” He had said to His disciples, “These things will they do unto you, because they know not Him that sent me.” How, then, do they both know not, and hate? For if the notion they have formed of Him is not that which He is in Himself, but some unknown conjecture of their own, then certainly it is not Himself they are found to hate, but that figment which they devise or rather suspect in their error. And yet, were it not that men could hate that which they know not, the Truth would not have asserted both, namely, that they both know not, and hate His Father. But such a possibility, if by the Lord’s help we are able to show it, cannot be demonstrated at present, as this discourse must now be brought to a close.

1. The Lord says, as you have just been hearing, “He that hateth me, hateth my Father also:” and yet He had said a little before, “These things will they do unto you, because they know not Him that sent me.” A question therefore arises that cannot be overlooked, how they can hate one whom they know not? For if it is not God as He really is, but something else, I know not what, that they suspect or believe Him to be, and hate this; then assuredly it is not God Himself that they hate, but the thing they conceive in their own erroneous suspicion or baseless credulity; and if they think of Him as He really is, how can they be said to know Him not? It may be the case, indeed, with regard to men, that we frequently love those whom we have never seen; and in this way it can, on the other hand, be none the less impossible that we should hate those whom we have never seen. The report, for instance, whether good or bad, about some preacher, leads us not improperly to love or to hate the unknown. But if the report is truthful, how can one, of whom we have got such true accounts, be spoken of as unknown? Is it because we have not seen his face? And yet, though he himself does not see it, he can be known to no one better than to himself. The knowledge of any one, therefore, is not conveyed to us in his bodily countenance, but only lies open to our apprehension when his life and character are revealed. Otherwise no one would be able to know himself, because unable to see his own face. But surely he knows himself more certainly than he is known to others, inasmuch as by inward inspection he can the more certainly see what he is conscious of, what he desires, what he is living for; and it is when these are likewise laid open to us, that he becomes truly known to ourselves. And as these, accordingly, are commonly brought to us regarding the absent, or even the dead, either by hearsay or correspondence, it thus comes about that people whom we have never seen by face (and yet of whom we are not entirely ignorant), we frequently either hate or love.

2. But in such cases our credulity is frequently at fault; for sometimes even history, and still more ordinary report, turns out to be false. Yet, it ought to be our concern, in order not to be misled by an injurious opinion, seeing we cannot search into the consciences of men, to have a true and certain sentiment about things themselves. I mean, that in regard to this or that man, if we know not whether he is immodest or modest, we should at all events hate immodesty and love modesty: and if in regard to some one or other we know not whether he is unjust or just, we should at any rate love justice and abhor injustice; not such things as we erroneously fancy to ourselves, but such as we believingly perceive according to God’s truth, the one to be desired, the other to be shunned; so that, when in regard to things themselves we do desire what ought to be desired, and utterly avoid what ought to be avoided, we may find pardon for the mistaken feelings which we at times, yea, at all times, entertain regarding the actual state of others which is hidden from our eyes. For this, I think, has to do with human temptation, without which we cannot pass through this life, so that the apostle said, “No temptation should befall you but such as is common to man.”1479 For what is so common to man as inability to inspect the heart of man; and therefore, instead of scrutinizing its inmost recesses, to suspect for the most part something very different from what is going on therein? And although in these dark regions of human realities, that is, of other people’s inward thoughts, we cannot clear up our suspicions, because we are only men, yet we ought to restrain our judgments, that is, all definite and fixed opinions, and not judge anything before the time, until the Lord come, and bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts; and then shall every man have praise of God.1480 When, therefore, we are falling into no error in regard to the thing itself, so that there is an accordance with right in our reprobation of vice and approbation of virtue; surely, if a mistake is committed in connection with individuals, a temptation so characteristic of man is within the scope of forgiveness.

3. But amid all these darknesses of human hearts, it happens as a thing much to be wondered at and mourned over, that one, whom we account unjust, and who nevertheless is just, and in whom, without knowing it, we love justice, we sometimes avoid, and turn away from, and hinder from approaching us, and refuse to have life and living in common with him; and, if necessity compel the infliction of discipline, whether to save others from harm or bring the person himself back to rectitude, we even pursue him with a salutary harshness; and so afflict a good man as if he were wicked, and one whom unknowingly we love. This takes place if one, for example’s sake, who is modest is believed by us to be the opposite. For, beyond doubt, if I love a modest person, he is himself the very object that I love; and therefore I love the man himself, and know it not. And if I hate an immodest person, it is on that account, not him that I hate: for he is not the thing that I hate; and yet to that object of my love, with whom my heart makes continual abode in the love of modesty, I am ignorantly doing an injury, erring as I do, not in the distinction I make between virtue and vice, but in the thick darkness of the human heart. Accordingly, as it may so happen that a good man may unknowingly hate a good man, or rather loves him without knowing it (for the man himself he loves in loving that which is good; for what the other is, is the very thing that he loves); and without knowing it, hates not the man himself, but that which he supposes him to be: so may it also be the case that an unjust man hates a just man, and, while he opines that he loves one who is unjust like himself, unknowingly loves the just man; and yet so long as he believes him to be unjust, he loves not the man himself, but that which he imagines him to be. And as it is with another man, so is it also with God. For, to conclude, had the Jews been asked if they loved God, what other answer would they have 1479 1 Cor. x. 13. 1480 1 Cor. iv. 5. given but that they did love Him, and that not with any intentional falsehood, but because erroneously fancying that they did so? For how could they love the Father of the truth, who were filled with hatred to the truth itself? For they do not wish their own conduct to be condemned, and it is the truth’s task to condemn such conduct; and thus they hated the truth as much as they hated their own punishment, which the truth awards to such. But they know not that to be the truth which lays its condemnation on such as they: therefore they hate that which they know not; and hating it, they certainly cannot but also hate Him of whom it is born. And in this way, because they know not the truth, by whose judgment they are condemned, as that which is born of God the Father; of a surety also they both know not, and hate [the Father] Himself. Miserable men! who, because wishing to be wicked, deny that to be the truth whereby the wicked are condemned. For they refuse to own that to be what it is, when they ought themselves to refuse to be what they are; in order that, while it remains the same, they may be changed, lest by its judgment they fall into condemnation.

1. The Lord had said, “He that hateth me, hateth my Father also.” For of a certainty he that hateth the truth must also hate Him of whom the truth is born; on which subject we have already spoken, as we were granted ability. And then He added the words on which we have now to discourse: “If I had not done among [in] them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.” To wit, that great sin whereof He also says before, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.” Their sin was that of not believing on Him who thus spake and wrought. For they were not without sin before He so spake to them and did such works among them; but this sin of theirs, in not believing on Him, is thus specially mentioned because really inclusive in itself of all sins besides. For had they been clear of this one, and believed on Him, all else would also have been forgiven.

2. But what is meant when, after saying, “If I had not done among them works,” He immediately added, “which none other man did”? Of a certainty, among all the works of Christ, none seem to be greater than the raising of the dead; and yet we know that the same was done by the prophets of olden time. For Elias did so;1481 and Elisha also, both when alive in the flesh,1482 and when he lay buried in his sepulchre. For when certain men, who were carrying a dead person, had fled thither for refuge from an onset of their enemies, and had laid him down therein, he instantly came again to life.1483 And yet there were some works that Christ did which none other man did: as, when He fed the five thousand men with five loaves, and the four thousand with seven;1484 when He walked on the waters, and gave Peter power to do the same;1485 when He changed the water into wine;1486 when He opened the eyes of a man that was born blind,1487 and many besides, which it would take long to mention. But we are answered, that others also have done works which even He did not, and which no other man has done. For who else save Moses smote the Egyptians with so many and mighty plagues,1488 as when He led the people through the parted waters of 1481 1 Kings xvii. 21, 22. 1482 2 Kings iv. 35. 1483 2 Kings xiii. 21. 1484 Matt. xiv. 15–21, and xv. 32–38. 1485 Matt. xiv. 25–29. 1486 John ii. 9. 1487 John ix. 7. 1488 Ex. vii.-xii. the sea,1489 when he obtained manna for them from heaven in their hunger,1490 and water from the rock in their thirst?1491 Who else save Joshua the son of Nun1492 divided the stream of the Jordan for the people to pass over,1493 and by the utterance of a prayer to God bridled and stopped the revolving sun?1494 Who save Samson ever quenched his thirst with water flowing forth from the jawbone of a dead ass?1495 Who save Elias was carried aloft in a chariot of fire?1496 Who save Elisha, as I have just mentioned, after his own body was buried, restored the dead body of another to life? Who else besides Daniel lived unhurt amid the jaws of famishing lions, that were shut up with him?1497 And who else save the three men Ananias, Azariah, and Mishael, ever walked about unharmed in flames that blazed and did not burn?1498

3. I pass by other examples, as these I consider to be sufficient to show that some of the saints have done wonderful works, which none other man did. But we read of no one whatever of the ancients who cured with such power so many bodily defects, and bad states of the health, and troubles of mortals. For, to say nothing of those individual cases which He healed, as they occurred, by the word of command, the Evangelist Mark says in a certain place: “And at even, when the sun had set, they brought unto Him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils. And all the city was gathered together at the door. And He healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils.”1499 And Matthew, in giving us the same account, has also added the prophetic testimony, when he says: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sickness.”1500 In another passage also it is said by Mark: “And whithersoever He entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought Him that they might touch if it were but the border of His garment: and as many as touched Him were made whole.”1501 None other man did such things in 1489 Ex. xiv. 21–29. 1490 Ex. xvi. 1491 Ex. xvii. 6. 1492 “Jesus Nave”: ᾽Ιησοῦς (υἱὸς) Ναυῆ, Sept., Josh. i. 1. 1493 Josh. iii. 1494 Josh. x. 12–14. 1495 Judg. xv. 19. 1496 2 Kings ii. 11. 1497 Dan. vi. 22. 1498 Dan. iii. 23–27. 1499 Mark. i. 32–34. 1500 Matt. viii. 17. 1501 Mark vi. 56. them. For so are we to understand the words in them, not among them, or in their presence; but directly in them, because He healed them. For He wished them to understand the works as those which not only occasioned admiration, but conferred also manifest healing, and were benefits which they ought surely to have requited with love, and not with hatred. He transcends, indeed, the miracles of all besides, in being born of a virgin, and in possessing alone the power, both in His conception and birth, to preserve inviolate the integrity of His mother: but that was done neither before their eyes nor in them. For the knowledge of the truth of such a miracle was reached by the apostles, not through any onlooking that they had in common with others, but in the course of their separate discipleship. Moreover, the fact that on the third day He restored Himself to life from the very tomb, in the flesh wherein He had been slain, and, never thereafter to die, with it ascended into heaven, even surpasses all else that He did: but just as little was this done either in the Jews or before their eyes; nor had it yet been done, when He said, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did.”

4. The works, then, are doubtless those miracles of healing in connection with their bodily complaints which He exhibited to such an extent as no one before had furnished amongst them: for these they saw, and it is in reproaching them therewith that He proceeds to say, “But now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father: but [this cometh to pass] that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause [gratuitously].” He calls it, their law, not as invented by them, but given to them: just as we say, “Our daily bread;” which, nevertheless, we ask of God in conjoining the words “Give us.”1502 But one hates gratuitously who neither seeks advantage from the hatred nor avoids inconvenience: so do the wicked hate the Lord; and so also is He loved by the righteous, that is to say, gratuitously [gratis, freely,] inasmuch as they expect no other gifts beyond Himself, for He Himself will be all in all. But whoever would be disposed to look for something more profound in the words of Christ, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did” (for although such were done by the Father, or the Holy Spirit, yet no one else did them, for the whole Trinity is one and the same in substance), he will find that it was He who did it even when some man of God did something similar. For in Himself He can do everything by Himself; but without Him no one can do anything. For Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit are not three Gods, but one God, of whom it is written, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things.” 1503 No one else, therefore, really himself did the works which He did amongst them; for any one else who did any such works, did them only through His doing. But He Himself did them without any doing on their part.

1. The Lord Jesus, in the discourse which He addressed to His disciples after the supper, when Himself in immediate proximity to His passion, and, as it were, on the eve of departure, and of depriving them of His bodily presence while continuing His spiritual presence to all His disciples till the very end of the world, exhorted them to endure the persecutions of the wicked, whom He distinguished by the name of the world: and from which He also told them that He had chosen the disciples themselves, that they might know it was by the grace of God they were what they were, and by their own vices they had been what they had been. And then His own persecutors and theirs He clearly signified to be the Jews, that it might be perfectly apparent that they also were included in the appellation of that damnable world that persecuteth the saints. And when He had said of them that they knew not Him that sent Him, and yet hated both the Son and the Father, that is, both Him who was sent and Him who sent Him,—of all which we have already treated in previous discourses,—He reached the place where it is said, “This cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.” And then He added, as if by way of consequence, the words whereon we have undertaken at present to discourse: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, He shall bear witness of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.” But what connection has this with what He had just said, “But now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father: but that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause”? Was it that the Comforter, when He came, even the Spirit of truth, convicted those, who thus saw and hated, by a still clearer testimony? Yea, verily, some even of those who saw, and still hated, He did convert, by this manifestation of Himself, to the faith that worketh by love.1504 To make this view of the passage intelligible, we recall to your mind that so it actually befell. For when on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell upon an assembly of one hundred and twenty men, among whom were all the apostles; and when they, filled therewith were speaking in the language of every nation; a goodly number of those who had hated, amazed at the magnitude of the miracle (especially when they perceived in Peter’s address so great and divine a testimony borne in behalf of Christ, as that He, who was slain by them and accounted amongst the dead, was proved to have risen again, and to be now alive), were pricked in their hearts and converted; and so became aware of the beneficent character of that precious blood which had been so impiously and cruelly shed, because themselves redeemed by the very blood which they had shed.1505 For the blood of Christ 1504 Gal. v. 6. 1505 Acts ii. 2. was shed so efficaciously for the remission of all sins, that it could wipe out even the very sin of shedding it. With this therefore in His eye, the Lord said, “They hated me without a cause: but when the Comforter is come, He shall bear witness of me;” saying, as it were, They hated me, and slew me when I stood visibly before their eyes; but such shall be the testimony borne in my behalf by the Comforter, that He will bring them to believe in me when I am no longer visible to their sight.

2. “And ye also,” He says, “shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.” The Holy Spirit shall bear witness, and so also shall ye. For, just because ye have been with me from the beginning, ye can preach what ye know; which ye cannot do at present, because the fullness of that Spirit is not yet present within you. “He therefore shall testify of me, and ye also shall bear witness:” for the love of God shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Spirit, who shall be given unto you,1506 will give you the confidence needful for such witness-bearing. And that certainly was still wanting to Peter, when, terrified by the question of a lady’s maid, he could give no true testimony; but, contrary to his own promise, was driven by the greatness of his fear thrice to deny Him.1507 But there is no such fear in love, for perfect love casteth out fear.1508 In fine, before the Lord’s passion, his slavish fear was questioned by a bond-woman; but after the Lord’s resurrection, his free love by the very Lord of freedom:1509 and so on the one occasion he was troubled, on the other tranquillized; there he denied the One he had loved, here he loved the One he had denied. But still even then that very love was weak and straitened, till strengthened and expanded by the Holy Spirit. And then that Spirit, pervading him thus with the fullness of richer grace, kindled his hitherto frigid heart to such a witness-bearing for Christ, and unlocked those lips that in their previous tremor had suppressed the truth, that, when all on whom the Holy Spirit had descended were speaking in the tongues of all nations to the crowds of Jews collected around, he alone broke forth before the others in the promptitude of his testimony in behalf of the Christ, and confounded His murderers with the account of His resurrection. And if any one would enjoy the pleasure of gazing on a sight so charming in its holiness, let him read the Acts of the Apostles:1510 and there let him be filled with amazement at the preaching of the blessed Peter, over whose denial of his Master he had just been mourning; there let him behold that tongue, itself translated from diffidence to confidence, from bondage to liberty, converting to the confession of Christ the tongues of so many of His enemies, not one of which he could bear when lapsing himself into denial. And what shall 1506 Rom. v. 5. 1507 Matt. xxvi. 69–74. 1508 1 John iv. 18. 1509 John xxi. 15. 1510 Acts ii.–v. I say more? In him there shone forth such an effulgence of grace, and such a fullness of the Holy Spirit, and such a weight of most precious truth poured from the lips of the preacher, that he transformed that vast multitude of Jews who were the adversaries and murderers of Christ into men that were ready to die for His name, at whose hands he himself was formerly afraid to die with his Master. All this did that Holy Spirit when sent, who had previously only been promised. And it was these great and marvellous gifts of His own that the Lord foresaw, when He said, “They have both seen and hated both me and my Father: that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness.” For He, in bearing witness Himself, and inspiring such witnesses with invincible courage, divested Christ’s friends of their fear, and transformed into love the hatred of His enemies.

1. In the words preceding this chapter of the Gospel, the Lord strengthened His disciples to endure the hatred of their enemies, and prepared them also by His own example to become the more courageous in imitating Him: adding the promise, that the Holy Spirit should come to bear witness of Him, and also that they themselves could become His witnesses, through the effectual working of His Spirit in their hearts. For such is His meaning when He saith, “He shall bear witness of me, and ye also shall bear witness.” That is to say, because He shall bear witness, ye also shall bear witness: He in your hearts, you in your voices; He by inspiration, you by utterance: that the words might be fulfilled, “Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth.”1511 For it would have been to little purpose to have exhorted them by His example, had He not also filled them with His Spirit. Just as we see that the Apostle Peter, after having heard His words, when He said, “The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you;”1512 and seen that already fulfilled in Him, wherein, had example been sufficient, he ought to have imitated the patient endurance of his Lord, yet succumbed and fell into denial, as utterly unable to bear what He saw his Master enduring. But when he really received the gift of the Holy Spirit, he preached Him whom he had denied; and whom he had been afraid to confess, he had no fear now in openly proclaiming. Already, indeed, had he been sufficiently taught by example to know what was proper to be done; but not yet was he inspired with the power to do what he knew: he had got instruction to stand, but not the strength to keep him from falling. But after this was supplied by the Holy Spirit, he preached Christ even to the death, whom, in his fear of death, he had previously denied. And so the Lord in this succeeding chapter, on which we have now to address you, saith, “These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.” As it is sung in the psalm, “Great peace have they who love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them.”1513 Properly enough, therefore, with the promise of the Holy Spirit, by whose operation in their hearts they should be made His witnesses, He added, “These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.” For when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given unto us,1514 they have great peace who love God’s law, so that nothing may offend them.

2. And then He expressly declares what they were to suffer: “They shall put you out of the synagogues.” But what harm was it for the apostles to be expelled from the Jewish syn- 1511 Ps. xix. 4. 1512 Chap. xv. 20. 1513 Ps. cxix. 165. 1514 Rom. v. 5. agogues, as if they were not to separate themselves therefrom, although no one expelled them? Doubtless He meant to announce with reprobation, that the Jews would refuse to receive Christ, from whom they as certainly would refuse to withdraw; and so it would come to pass that the latter, who could not exist without Him, would also be cast out along with Him by those who would not have Him as their place of abode. For certainly, as there was no other people of God than that seed of Abraham, they would, had they only acknowledged and received Christ, have remained as the natural branches in the olive tree;1515 nor would the churches of Christ have been different from the synagogues of the Jews, for they would have been one and the same, had they also desired to abide in Him. But having refused, what remained but that, continuing themselves out of Christ, they put out of the synagogues those who would not abandon Christ? For having received the Holy Spirit, and so become His witnesses, they would certainly not belong to the class of whom it is said: “Many of the chief rulers of the Jews believed on Him; but for fear of the Jews they dared not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.”1516 And so they believed on Him, but not in the way He wished them to believe when He said: “How can ye believe, who expect honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?”1517 It is, therefore, with those disciples who so believe in Him, that, filled with the Holy Spirit, or, in other words, with the gift of divine grace, they no longer belong to those who, “ignorant of the righteousness of God, and going about to establish their own, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God;”1518 nor to those of whom it is said, “They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God:” that the prophecy harmonizes, which finds its fulfillment in their own case: “They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance: and in Thy name shall they rejoice all the day; and in Thy righteousness shall they be exalted: for Thou art the glory of their strength.”1519 Rightly enough is it said to such, “They shall cast you out of the synagogues;” that is, they who “have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge;” because, “ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own,”1520 they expel those who are exalted, not in their own righteousness, but in God’s, and have no cause to be ashamed at being expelled by men, since He is the glory of their strength.

3. Finally, to what He had thus told them, He added the words: “But the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service: and these things will they 1515 Rom. xi. 17. 1516 Chap. xii. 42, 43. 1517 Chap. v. 44. 1518 Rom. x. 3. 1519 Ps. lxxxix. 15–17. 1520 Rom. x. 2, 3. do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.” That is to say, they have not known the Father, nor His Son, to whom they think they will be doing service in slaying you. Words which the Lord added in the way of consolation to His own, who should be driven out of the Jewish synagogues. For it is in thus announcing beforehand what evils they would have to endure for their testimony in His behalf, that He said, “They will put you out of the synagogues.” Nor does He say, And the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. What then? “But the hour cometh:” just in the way He would have spoken, were He foretelling them of something good that would follow such evils. What, then, does He mean by the words, “They will put you out of the synagogues: but the hour cometh”? As if He would have gone on to say this: They, indeed, will scatter you, but I will gather you; or, They shall, indeed, scatter you, but the hour of your joy cometh. What, then, has the word which He uses, “but the hour cometh,” to do here, as if He were going on to promise them comfort after their tribulation, when apparently He ought rather to have said, in the form of continuous narration, 1521 And the hour cometh? But He said not, And it cometh, although predicting the approach of one tribulation after another, instead of comfort after tribulation. Could it have been that such a separation from the synagogues would so discompose them, that they would prefer to die, rather than remain in this life apart from the Jewish assemblies? Far surely would those be from such discomposure, who were seeking, not the praise of men, but of God. What, then, of the words, “They will put you out of the synagogues: but the hour cometh;” when apparently He ought rather to have said, And the hour cometh, “that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service”? For it is not even said, But the hour cometh that they shall kill you, as if implying that their comfort for such a separation would be found in the death that would befall them; but “The hour cometh,” He says, “that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” On the whole, I do not think He wished to convey any further meaning than that they might understand and rejoice that they themselves would gain so many to Christ, by being driven out of the Jewish congregations, that it would be found insufficient to expel them, and they would not suffer them to live for fear of all being converted by their preaching to the name of Christ, and so turned away from the observance of Judaism, as if it were the very truth of God. For so ought we to understand the reference of His words to the Jews, when He said of them, “They will put you out of the synagogues.” For the witnesses, in other words, the martyrs of Christ, were likewise slain by the Gentiles: they, however, thought not that it was to the true God, but to their own false deities, that they were doing service when they so 1521 Indicativo modo. acted. But every Jew that slew the preachers of Christ reckoned that he was doing God serv ice; believing as he did that all who were converted to Christ were deserting the God of Israel. For it was also by the same reasoning that they were incited to the murder of Christ Himself: because their own words on this subject have also been put on record. “Ye perceive that the whole world is gone after him:1522 “If we let him live, the Romans will come, and take away both our place and nation.” And those of Caiaphas: “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.”1523 And accordingly in this address He sought by His own example to stimulate His disciples, to whom He had just been saying, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you;”1524 that as in slaying Him they thought they had done God a service, so also would it be in reference to them.

4. Such, then, is the meaning of these words: “They will put you out of the synagogues;” but have no fear of solitude: inasmuch as, when separated from their assembly, you will assemble so many in my name, that they, in very fear lest the temple, that was with them, and all the sacraments of the old law, should be deserted, will slay you: actually, in thus shedding your blood, full of the notion that they are doing God service. An illustration surely of the apostle’s words, “They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge;”1525 when they imagine that they are doing God service in slaying His servants. Appalling mistake! Is it thus thou wouldst please God by striking down the God-pleaser; and is the living temple of God by thy blows laid level with the ground, that God’s temple of stone may not be deserted? Accursed blindness! But it is in part that it has happened to Israel, that the fullness of the Gentiles might come in: in part, I say, and not totally, has it happened. For not all, but only some of the branches have been broken off, that the wild olive might be ingrafted.1526 For just at the time when the disciples of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, were speaking in the tongues of all nations, and performing many divine miracles, and scattering divine utterances on every side, Christ, even though slain, was so beloved, that His disciples, when expelled from the congregations of the Jews, gathered into a congregation of their own a vast multitude of those very Jews, and had no fear of being left to solitude.1527 Whereupon, accordingly, the others, reprobate and blind, being inflamed with wrath, and having a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, and believing that they were doing God service, put them to death. But He, who was slain for them, gathered those together; just as He had also, before 1522 Chap. xii. 19. 1523 Chap. xi. 48, 50. 1524 Chap. xv. 20. 1525 Rom. x. 2. 1526 Rom. xi. 25, 17. 1527 Acts ii.–iv. He was slain, instructed them in what was to happen, lest their minds, left ignorant and unprepared, should be cast into trouble by evils, however transient, that were unexpected and unprovided for; but rather by knowing of them beforehand, and sustaining them with patience, might be led onward to everlasting blessing. For that such was the cause of His making these announcements to them beforehand, is shown also by His words that followed: “But these things have I told you, that, when their time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them.” Their hour was an hour of darkness, a midnight hour. But the Lord commanded His loving-kindness in the daytime, and made them sing of it in the night:1528 when the Jewish night threw no confusion of darkness into the day of the Christians, separated as it was from themselves; and when that which could slay the flesh had no power to darken their faith.

1. When the Lord Jesus had foretold His disciples the persecutions they would have to suffer after His departure, He went on to say: “And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you; but now I go my way to Him that sent me.” And here the first thing we have to look at is, whether He had not previously foretold them of the sufferings that were to come. And the three other evangelists make it sufficiently clear that He had uttered such predictions prior to the approach of the supper:1529 which was over, according to John, when He spake, and added, “And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.” Are we, then, to settle such a question in this way, that they, too, tell us that He was near His passion when He said these things? Then it was not when He was with them at the beginning that He so spake, for He was on the very eve of departing, and proceeding to the Father: and so also, even according to these evangelists, it is strictly true what is here said, “And these things I said not unto you at the beginning.” But what are we to do with the credibility of the Gospel according to Matthew, who relates that such announcements were made to them by the Lord, not only when He was on the eve of sitting down with His disciples to the passover supper, but also at the beginning, when the twelve apostles are for the first time expressed by name, and sent forth on the work of God? 1530 What, then, is the meaning of what He says here, “And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you;” but that what He says here of the Holy Spirit who was to come to them, and to bear witness, when they should have such ills to endure, this He said not unto them at the beginning, because He was with themselves?

2. The Comforter then, or Advocate (for both form the interpretation of the Greek word, paraclete), had become necessary on Christ’s departure: and therefore He had not spoken of Him at the beginning, when He was with them, because His own presence was their comfort; but on the eve of His own departure it behoved Him to speak of His coming, by whom it would be brought about that with love shed abroad in their hearts they would preach the word of God with all boldness; and with Him inwardly bearing witness with them of Christ, they also should bear witness, and feel it to be no cause of stumbling when their Jewish enemies put them out of the synagogues, and slew them, with the thought that they were doing God service; because the charity beareth all things,1531 which was to be shed abroad in their hearts by the gift of the Holy Spirit.1532 In this, therefore, is the whole 1529 Matt. xxiv. 9; Mark xiii. 9–13; and Luke xxi. 12–17. 1530 Matt. x. 17. 1531 1 Cor. xiii. 7. 1532 Rom. v. 5. meaning to be found, that He was to make them His martyrs, that is, His witnesses through the Holy Spirit; so that by His effectual working within them, they would endure the hardships of all kinds of persecution, and, set aglow at that divine fire, lose none of their warmth in the love of preaching. “These things,” therefore, He says, “have I told you, that, when their time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them” (ver. 4). These things, I say, I have told you, not merely because ye shall have to endure such things, but because, when the Comforter is come, He shall bear witness of me, that ye may not keep them back through fear, and by whom ye yourselves shall also be enabled to bear witness. “And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you,” and I myself was your comfort through my bodily presence exhibited to your human senses, and which, as infants, ye were able to comprehend.

3. “But now I go my way to Him that sent me; and none of you,” He says, “asketh me, Whither goest Thou?” He means that His departure would be such that none would ask Him of that which they should see taking place in broad daylight before their eyes: for previously to this they had asked Him whither He was going, and had been answered that He was going whither they themselves could not then come.1533 Now, however, He promises that He will go away in such a manner that none of them shall ask Him whither He goes. For a cloud received Him when He ascended up from their side; and of His going into heaven they made no verbal inquiry, but had ocular evidence.1534

4. “But because I have said these things unto you,” He adds, “sorrow hath filled your heart.” He saw, indeed, what effect these words of His were producing in their hearts; for having not yet within them the spiritual consolation, which they were afterwards to have by the Holy Spirit, what they still saw objectively in Christ they were afraid of losing; and because they could have no doubt they were about to lose Him whose announcements were always true, their human feelings were saddened, because their carnal view of Him was to be left a blank. But He knew what was most expedient for them, because that inward sight, wherewith the Holy Spirit was yet to comfort them, was undoubtedly superior; not by bringing a human body into the bodies of those who saw, but by infusing Himself into the hearts of those who believed. And then He adds, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you:” as if He had said, It is expedient for you that this form of a servant be taken away from you; as the Word made indeed flesh I dwell among you; but I would not that ye should continue to love me carnally, and, content with such 1533 Chap. xiii. 36. 1534 Acts i. 9–11. milk, desire to remain infants always. “It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.” If I withdraw not the tender nutriment wherewith I have nourished you, ye will acquire no keen relish of solid food; if ye adhere in a carnal way to the flesh, ye will not have room for the Spirit. For what is this, “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you”? Was it that He could not send Him while located here Himself? Who would venture to say so? Neither was it, that where He was, thence the Other had withdrawn, or that He had so come from the Father as that He did not still abide with the Father. And still further, how could He, even when having His own abode on earth, be unable to send Him, who we know came and remained upon Him at His baptism;1535 yea, more, from whom we know that He was never separable? What does it mean, then, “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you;” but that ye cannot receive the Spirit so long as ye continue to know Christ after the flesh? Hence one who had already been made a partaker of the Spirit says, “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we [Him] no more.”1536 For now even the very flesh of Christ he did not know in a carnal way, when brought to a spiritual knowledge of the Word that had been made flesh. And such, doubtless, did the good Master wish to intimate, when He said, “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.”

5. But with Christ’s bodily departure, both the Father and the Son, as well as the Holy Spirit, were spiritually present with them. For had Christ departed from them in such a sense that it would be in His place, and not along with Him, that the Holy Spirit would be present in them, what becomes of His promise when He said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world;”1537 and, I and the Father “will come unto him, and will make Our abode with him;”1538 seeing that He also promised that He would send the Holy Spirit in such a way that He would be with them for ever? In this way it was, on the other hand, that seeing they were yet out of their present carnal or animal condition to become spiritual, with undoubted certainty also were they yet to have in a more comprehensive way both the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But in no one are we to believe that the Father is present without the Son and the Holy Spirit, or the Father and the Son without the Holy Spirit, or the Son without the Father and the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit without the Father and the Son, or the Father and the Holy Spirit without the Son; but wherever any one of Them is, there also is the Trinity, one God. But here the Trinity had to be suggested in such a way that, although there was no diversity of essence, yet the personal distinction 1535 Chap. i. 32. 1536 2 Cor. v. 16. 1537 Matt. xxviii. 20. 1538 Chap. xiv. 23. of each one separately should be presented to notice; where those who have a right understanding can never imagine a separation of natures.

6. But that which follows, “And when He is come, He will convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, indeed, because they believe not on me; but of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more; and of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged” (vers. 8–11); as if it were sin simply not to believe on Christ; and as if it were very righteousness not to see Christ; and as if that were the very judgment, that the prince of this world, that is, the devil, is judged: all this is very obscure, and cannot be included in the present discourse, lest brevity only increase the obscurity; but must rather be deferred till another occasion for such explanation as the Lord may enable us to give.

1. The Lord, when promising that He would send the Holy Spirit, said, “When He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” What does it mean? Is it that the Lord Jesus Christ did not reprove the world of sin, when He said, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin”? And that no one may take it to his head to say that this applied properly to the Jews, and not to the world, did He not say in another place, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own”?1539 Did He not reprove it of righteousness, when He said, “O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee”?1540 And did He not reprove it of judgment when He declared that He would say to those on the left hand, “Depart ye into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels”?1541 And many other passages are to be found in the holy evangel, where Christ reproveth the world of these things. Why is it, then, He attributeth this to the Holy Spirit, as if it were His proper prerogative? Is it that, because Christ spake only among the nation of the Jews, He does not appear to have reproved the world, inasmuch as one may be understood to be reproved who actually hears the reprover; while the Holy Spirit, who was in His disciples when scattered throughout the whole world, is to be understood as having reproved not one nation, but the world? For mark what He said to them when about to ascend into heaven: “It is not for you to know the times or the moments, which the Father hath put in His own power. But ye shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit, that cometh upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”1542 Surely this is to reprove the world. But would any one venture to say that the Holy Spirit reproveth the world through the disciples of Christ, and that Christ Himself doth not, when the apostle exclaims, “Would ye receive a proof of Him that speaketh in me, namely Christ?”1543 And so those, surely, whom the Holy Spirit reproveth, Christ reproveth likewise. But in my opinion, because there was to be shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit that love1544 which casteth out the fear,1545 that might have hindered them from venturing to reprove the world which bristled with persecutions, therefore it was that He said, “He shall reprove the world:” as if 1539 Chap. xv. 22, 19. 1540 Chap. xvii. 25. 1541 Matt. xxv. 41. 1542 Acts i. 7, 8. 1543 2 Cor. xiii. 3. 1544 Rom. v. 5. 1545 1 John iv. 18. He would have said, He shall shed abroad love in your hearts, and, having your fear thereby expelled, ye shall have freedom to reprove. We have frequently said, however, that the operations of the Trinity are inseparable;1546 but the Persons needed to be set forth one by one, that not only without separating Them, but also without confounding Them together, we may have a right understanding both of Their Unity and Trinity.

2. He next explains what He has said “of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” “Of sin indeed,” He says, “because they have believed not on me.” For this sin, as if it were the only one, He has put before the others; because with the continuance of this one, all others are retained, and in the removal of this, the others are remitted. “But of righteousness,” He adds, “because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more.” And here we have to consider in the first place, if any one is rightly reproved of sin, how he may also be rightly reproved of righteousness. For if a sinner ought to be reproved just because he is a sinner, will any one imagine that a righteous man is also to be reproved because he is righteous? Surely not. For if at any time a righteous man also is reproved, he is rightly reproved on this account, that, according to Scripture, “There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.” And accordingly, when a righteous man is reproved, he is reproved of sin, and not of righteousness. Since in that divine utterance also, where we read, “Be not made righteous over-much,”1547 there is notice taken, not of the righteousness of the wise man, but of the pride of the presumptuous. The man, therefore, that becomes “righteous over-much,” by that very excess becomes unrighteous. For he makes himself righteous overmuch who says that he has no sin, or who imagines that he is made righteous, not by the grace of God, but by the sufficiency of his own will: nor is he righteous through living righteously, but is rather self-inflated with the imagination of being what he is not. By what means, then, is the world to be reproved of righteousness, if not by the righteousness of believers? Accordingly, it is convinced of sin, because it believeth not on Christ; and it is convinced of the righteousness of those who do believe. For the very comparison with believers is itself a reproving of unbelievers. And this the exposition itself sufficiently indicates. For in wishing to open up what He has said, He adds, “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more.” He does not say, And they shall see me no more; that is, those of whom He had said, “because they have believed not on me.” Of them He spake, when expounding what He denominated sin, in the words, “because they have believed not on me;” but when expounding what He called righteousness, whereof the world is convicted, He turned to those to whom He was speaking, and said, “because I go to the Father, and ye 1546 Tract. XX. 1547 Eccles. vii. 20, 16. shall see me no more.” Wherefore it is of its own sins, but of others’ righteousness, that the world is convicted, just as darkness is reproved by the light: “For all things,” says the apostle, “that are reproved, are made manifest by the light.”1548 For the magnitude of the evil chargeable on those who do not believe, may be made apparent not only by itself, but also by the goodness of those who do believe. And since the cry of unbelievers usually is, How can we believe what we do not see? so the righteousness of unbelievers just required this very definition, “Because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more.” For blessed are they who see not, and yet do believe.1549 For of those also who saw Christ, the faith in Him that met with commendation was not that they believed what they saw, namely, the Son of man; but that they believed what they did not see, namely, the Son of God. But after His servant-form was itself also withdrawn from their view, then in every respect was the word truly fulfilled, “The just liveth by faith.”1550 For “faith,” according to the definition in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “is the confidence of those that hope,1551 the conviction of things that are not seen.”

3. But how are we to understand, “Ye shall see me no more”? For He saith not, I go to the Father, and ye shall not see me, so as to be understood as referring to the interval of time when He would not be seen, whether short or long, but at all events terminable; but in saying, “Ye shall see me no more,” as if a truth announced beforehand that they would never see Christ in all time coming. Is this the righteousness we speak of, never to see Christ, and yet to believe on Him; seeing that the faith whereby the just liveth is commended on the very ground of believing that the Christ whom it seeth not meanwhile, it shall see some day? Once more, in reference to this righteousness, are we to say that the Apostle Paul was not righteous when confessing that He had seen Christ after His ascension into heaven,1552 which was undoubtedly the time of which He had already said, “Ye shall see me no more”? Was Stephen, that hero of surpassing renown, not righteous in the spirit of this righteousness, who, when they were stoning him, exclaimed, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God”?1553 What, then, is meant by “I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more,” but just this, As I am while with you now? For at that time He was still mortal in the likeness of sinful flesh.1554 He could suffer hunger and thirst, be wearied, and sleep; and this Christ, that is, Christ in such a condition, they were no more 1548 Eph. v. 13. 1549 Chap. xx. 29. 1550 Rom. i. 17; Hab. ii. 4; and Heb. xi. 1. 1551 Sperantium substantia. 1552 1 Cor. xv. 8. 1553 Acts vii. 56. 1554 Rom. viii. 3. to see after He had passed from this world to the Father; and such, also, is the righteousness of faith, whereof the apostle says, “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.”1555 This, then, He says, will be your righteousness whereof the world shall be reproved, “because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more:” seeing that ye shall believe in me as in one whom ye shall not see; and when ye shall see me as I shall be then, ye shall not see me as I am while with you meanwhile; ye shall not see me in my humility, but in my exaltation; nor in my mortality, but in my eternity; nor at the bar, but on the throne of judgment: and by this faith of yours, in other words, your righteousness, the Holy Spirit will reprove an unbelieving world.

4. He will also reprove it “of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” Who is this, save he of whom He saith in another place, “Behold, the prince of the world cometh, and shall find nothing in me;”1556 that is, nothing within his jurisdiction, nothing belonging to him; in fact, no sin at all? For thereby is the devil the prince of the world. For it is not of the heavens and of the earth, and of all that is in them, that the devil is prince, in the sense in which the world is to be understood, when it is said, “And the world was made by Him;” but the devil is prince of that world, whereof in the same passage He immediately afterwards subjoins the words, “And the world knew Him not;”1557 that is, unbelieving men, wherewith the world through its utmost extent is filled: among whom the believing world groaneth, which He, who made the world, chose out of the world; and of whom He saith Himself, “The Son of man came not to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”1558 He is the judge by whom the world is condemned, the helper whereby the world is saved: for just as a tree is full of foliage and fruit, or a field of chaff and wheat, so is the world full of believers and unbelievers. Therefore the prince of this world, that is, the prince of the darkness thereof, or of unbelievers, out of whose hands that world is rescued, to which it is said, “Ye were at one time darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord:” 1559 the prince of this world, of whom He elsewhere saith, “Now is the prince of this world cast out,”1560 is assuredly judged, inas much as he is irrevocably destined to the judgment of everlasting fire. And so of this judgment, by which the prince of the world is judged, is the world reproved by the Holy Spirit; for it is judged along with its prince, whom it imitates in its own pride and impiety. “For if God,” in the words of the Apostle Peter, “spared not the angels that sinned, but thrust them into prisons of infernal darkness, and gave them up to be re- 1555 2 Cor. v. 16. 1556 Chap. xiv. 30. 1557 Chap. i. 10. 1558 Chap. iii. 17. 1559 Eph. v. 8. 1560 Chap. xii. 31. served for punishment in the judgment,”1561 how is the world otherwise than reproved of this judgment by the Holy Spirit, when it is in the Holy Spirit that the apostle so speaketh? Let men, therefore, believe in Christ, that they be not convicted of the sin of their own unbelief, whereby all sins are retained: let them make their way into the number of believers, that they be not convicted of the righteousness of those, whom, as justified, they fail to imitate: let them beware of that future judgment, that they be not judged with the prince of the world, whom, judged as he is, they continue to imitate. For the unbending pride of mortals can have no thought of being spared itself, as it is thus called to think with terror of the punishment that overtook the pride of angels.

1. In this portion of the holy Gospel, where the Lord says to His disciples, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” there meets us first this subject of needful inquiry, how it was that He said a little before, “All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you,”1562 and yet says here, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” But how it was that He spake of what He had not yet done as if it were done, just as the prophet testifies that God has made those things which are still to come, when He says, “Who hath made those things which are still to come,”1563 we have already explained as well as we could when dealing with those words themselves. Now, however, you are perhaps wishing to know what those things were which the apostles were then unable to bear. But which of us would venture to assert his own present capacity for what they wanted the ability to receive? And on this account you are neither to expect me to tell you things which perhaps I could not comprehend myself were they told me by another; nor would you be able to bear them, even were I talented enough to let you hear of things that are above your comprehension. It may be, indeed, that some among you are fit enough already to comprehend things which are still beyond the grasp of others; and if not all about which the divine Master said, “I have yet many things to say unto you,” yet perhaps some of them: but what they were which He Himself thus omitted to tell them, it would be rash to have even the wish to presume to say. For at that time the apostles were not yet fitted even to die for Christ, when He said to them, “Ye cannot follow me now,” and when the very foremost of them, Peter, who had presumptuously declared that he was already able, met with a different experience from what he anticipated:1564 and yet afterwards a countless number both of men and women, boys and girls, youths and maidens, old and young, were crowned with martyrdom; and the sheep were found able for that which, when the Lord spake these words, the shepherds were still unable to bear. Ought, then, those sheep to have been asked, in that extremity of trial, when required to contend for the truth even unto death, and to shed their blood for the name or doctrine of Christ;—ought they, I say, to have been asked, Which of you would venture to account himself ready for martyrdom, for which Peter was still unfitted, even when taught face to face by the Lord Himself? In the same way, therefore, one may say that Christian people, even when desiring to hear, ought not to be told what those things are of which the Lord then said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” If the 1562 Chap. xv. 15. 1563 Isa. xlv. 11, Septuagint. 1564 Chap. xiii. 36–38. apostles were still unable, much more so are ye: although it may be that many now can bear what Peter then could not, in the same way as many are able to be crowned with martyrdom which at that time was still beyond the power of Peter, more especially that now the Holy Spirit has been sent, as He was not then, of whom He went on immediately to add the words, “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will teach you all truth,” thereby showing of a certainty that they could not bear what He had still to say, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon them.

2. Well, then, let us grant that it is so, that many can now bear those things when the Holy Spirit has been sent, which could not then, prior to His coming, be borne by the disciples: do we on that account know what it is that He would not say, as we should know it were we reading or hearing it as uttered by Himself? For it is one thing to know whether we or you could bear it; but quite another to know what it is, whether able to be borne or not. But when He Himself was silent about such things, which of us could say, It is this or that? Or if he venture to say it, how will he prove it? For who could manifest such vanity or recklessness as when saying what he pleased to whom he pleased, even though true, to affirm without any divine authority that it was the very thing which the Lord on that occasion refused to utter? Which of us could do such a thing without incurring the severest charge of rashness,—a thing which gets no countenance from prophetic or apostolic authority? For surely if we had read any such thing in the books confirmed by canonical authority, which were written after our Lord’s ascension, it would not have been enough to have read such a statement, had we not also read in the same place that this was actually one of those things which the Lord was then unwilling to tell His disciples, because they were unable to bear them. As if, for example, I were to say that the words which we read at the opening of this Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God:” and those which follow, because they were written afterwards, and yet without any mention of their being uttered by the Lord Jesus when He was here in the flesh, but were written by one of His apostles, to whom they were revealed by His Spirit, were some of those which the Lord would not then utter, because the disciples were unable to bear them; who would listen to me in making so rash a statement? But if in the same passage where we read the one we were also to read the other, who would not give due credence to such an apostle?

3. But it seems to me also very absurd to say that the disciples could not then have borne what we find recorded, about things invisible and of profoundest import, in the apostolic epistles, which were written in after days, and of which there is no mention that the Lord uttered them when His visible presence was with them. For why could they not bear then what is now read in their books, and borne by every one, even though not understood? Some things there are, indeed, in the Holy Scriptures which unbelieving men both have no understanding of when they read or hear them, and cannot bear when they are read or heard: as the pagans, that the world was made by Him who was crucified; as the Jews, that He could be the Son of God, who broke up their mode of observing the Sabbath; as the Sabellians, that the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit are a Trinity; as the Arians, that the Son is equal to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to the Father and Son; as the Photinians, that Christ is not only man like ourselves, but God also, equal to God the Father; as the Manicheans, that Christ Jesus, by whom we must be saved, condescended to be born in the flesh and of the flesh of man: and all others of divers perverse sects, who can by no means bear whatever is found in the Holy Scriptures and in the Catholic faith that stands out in opposition to their errors, just as we cannot bear their sacrilegious vaporings and mendacious insanities. For what else is it not to be able to bear, but not to retain in our minds with calmness and composure? But what of all that has been written since our Lord’s ascension with canonical truth and authority, is it not read and heard with equanimity by every believer, and catechumen also, before in his baptism he receive the Holy Spirit, even although it is not yet understood as it ought to be? How then, could not the disciples bear any of those things which were written after the Lord’s ascension, even though the Holy Spirit was not yet sent to them, when now they are all borne by catechumens prior to their reception of the Holy Spirit? For although the sacramental privileges of believers are not exhibited to them, it does not therefore happen that they cannot bear them; but in order that they may be all the more ardently desired by them, they are honorably concealed from their view.

4. Wherefore, beloved, you need not expect to hear from us what the Lord then refrained from telling His disciples, because they were still unable to bear them: but rather seek to grow in the love that is shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto you;1565 that, fervent in spirit, and loving spiritual things, you may be able, not by any sign apparent to your bodily eyes, or any sound striking on your bodily ears, but by the inward eyesight and hearing, to become acquainted with that spiritual light and that spiritual word which carnal men are unable to bear. For that cannot be loved which is altogether unknown. But when what is known, in however small a measure, is also loved, by the self-same love one is led on to a better and fuller knowledge. If, then, you grow in the love which the Holy Spirit spreads abroad in your hearts, “He will teach you all truth;” or, as other codices have it, “He will guide you in all truth:”1566 as it is said, “Lead me in Thy way, O Lord, and I will walk in Thy truth.”1567 So shall the result be, that not from outward teachers will you learn those things which the Lord at that time declined to utter, but be all taught of God;1568 so that the very things which you have learned and believed by means of lessons and sermons 1565 Rom. v. 5. 1566 ῾Οδηγήσει ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν ἀλήθειαν πᾶσαν, or ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πάσῃ 1567 Ps. lxxxvi. 11. 1568 Chap. vi. 45. supplied from without regarding the nature of God, as incorporeal, and unconfined by limits, and yet not rolled out as a mass of matter through infinite space, but everywhere whole and perfect and infinite, without the gleaming of colors, without the tracing of bodily outlines, without any markings of letters or succession of syllables,—your minds themselves may have the power to perceive. Well, now, I have just said something which is perhaps of that same character, and yet you have received it; and you have not only been able to bear it, but have also listened to it with pleasure. But were that inward Teacher, who, while still speaking in an external way to the disciples, said, “I have still many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” wishing to speak inwardly to us of what I have said of the incorporeal nature of God in the same way as He speaks to the angels, who always behold the face of the Father,1569 we should still be unable to bear them. Accordingly, when He says, “He will teach you all truth,” or “will guide you into all truth,” I do not think the fulfillment is possible in any one’s mind in this present life (for who is there, while living in this corruptible and soul-oppressing body,1570 that can know all truth, when even the apostle says, “We know in part”?), but because it is effected by the Holy Spirit, of whom we have now received the earnest,1571 that we shall attain also to the actual fullness of knowledge: whereof it is said by the same apostle, “But then face to face;” and, “Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known;”1572 not as a thing which he knows fully in this life, but which, as a thing that would still be future on to the attainment of that perfection, the Lord promised us through the love of the Spirit, when He said, “He will teach you all truth,” or “will guide you unto all truth.”

5. As these things are so, beloved, I warn you in the love of Christ to beware of impure seducers and sects of obscene filthiness, whereof the apostle says, “But it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret:”1573 lest, when they begin to teach their horrible impurities, which no human ear whatever can bear, they declare them to be the very things whereof the Lord said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now;” and assert that it is the Holy Spirit’s agency that makes such impure and detestable things possible to be borne. The evil things which no human modesty whatever can endure are of one kind, and of quite another are the good things which man’s little understanding is unable to bear: the former are wrought in unchaste bodies, the latter are beyond the reach of all bodies; the one is perpetrated in the filthiness of the flesh, the other is scarcely perceivable by the pure mind. “Be ye therefore renewed in the spirit of your 1569 Matt. xviii. 10. 1570 Wisd. ix. 15. 1571 2 Cor. i. 22. 1572 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12. 1573 Eph. v. 12. mind,”1574 and “understand what is the will of God, which is good, and acceptable, and perfect;”1575 that, “rooted and grounded in love, ye may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the length, and breadth, and height, and depth, even to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God.”1576 For in such a way will the Holy Spirit teach you all truth, when He shall shed abroad that love ever more and more largely in your hearts.

1. The Holy Spirit, whom the Lord promised to send to His disciples, to teach them all the truth which, at the time He was speaking to them, they were unable to bear: of the which Holy Spirit, as the apostle says, we have now received “the earnest,”1577 an expression whereby we are to understand that His fullness is reserved for us till another life: that Holy Spirit, therefore, teacheth believers also in the present life, as far as they can severally apprehend what is spiritual; and enkindles a growing desire in their breasts, according as each one makes progress in that love, which will lead him both to love what he knows already, and to long after what still remains to be known: so that those very things which he has some notion of at present, he may know that he is still ignorant of, as they are yet to be known in that life which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man hath perceived. 1578 But were the inner Master wishing at present to say those things in such a way of knowing, that is, to unfold and make them patent to our mind, our human weakness would be unable to bear them. Whereof you remember, beloved, that I have already spoken, when we were occupied with the words of the holy Gospel, where the Lord says, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Not that in these words of the Lord we should be suspecting an over-fastidious concealment of no one knows what secrets, which might be uttered by the Teacher, but could not be borne by the learner, but those very things which in connection with religious doctrine we read and write, hear and speak of, as within the knowledge of such and such persons, were Christ willing to utter to us in the self-same way as He speaks of them to the holy angels, in His own Person as the onlybegotten Word of the Father, and co-eternal with Him, where are the human beings that could bear them, even were they already spiritual, as the apostles still were not when the Lord so spoke to them, and as they afterwards became when the Holy Spirit descended? For, of course, whatever may be known of the creature, is less than the Creator Himself, who is the supreme and true and unchangeable God. And yet who keeps silence about Him? Where is His name not found in the mouths of readers, disputants, inquirers, respondents, adorers, singers, all sorts of haranguers, and lastly even of blasphemers themselves? And although no one keeps silence about Him, who is there that apprehends Him as He is to be understood, although He is never out of the mouths and the hearing of men? Who is there, whose keenness of mind can even get near Him? Who is there that would have known Him as the Trinity, had not He Himself desired so to become known? And what man is there that now holds his tongue about that Trinity; and yet what man is there that has any such 1577 2 Cor. i. 22. 1578 1 Cor. ii. 9. idea of it as the angels? The very things, therefore, that are incessantly being uttered offhand and openly about the eternity, the truth, the holiness of God, are understood well by some, and badly by others: nay rather, are understood by some, and not understood at all by others. For he that understands in a bad way, does not understand at all. And in the case even of those by whom they are understood in a right sense, by some they are perceived with less, by others with greater mental vividness, and by none on earth are apprehended as they are by the angels. In the very mind, therefore, that is to say, in the inner man, there is a kind of growth, not only in order to the transition from milk to solid food, but also to the taking of food itself in still larger and larger measure. But such growth is not in the way of a space-covering mass of matter, but in that of an illuminated understanding; because that food is itself the light of the understanding. In order, then, to your growth and apprehension of God, and in order that your apprehension may keep full pace with your everadvancing growth, you ought to be addressing your prayer, and turning your hope, not to the teacher whose voice only reaches your ears, that is, who plants and waters only by outside labor, but to Him who giveth the increase.1579

2. Accordingly, as I have admonished you in my last sermon, take heed, those of you specially who are still children and have need of a milk diet, of turning a curious ear to men, who have found occasion for self-deception and the deceiving of others in the words of the Lord, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” in order to the discovery of that which is unknown, while you still have minds that are incompetent to discriminate between the true and the false; and most especially on account of the obscene lewdnesses which Satan has instilled, by God’s permission, into unstable and carnal souls, for this end, that His judgments may everywhere be objects of terror, and that pure discipline may best manifest its sweetness in contrast with the impurities of wickedness; and that honor may be given to Him, and fear and modesty of demeanor assumed by every one, who has either been kept from falling into such evils by His kingly power, or been raised out of them by His uplifting hand. Beware, with fear and prayer, of rushing into that mystery of Solomon’s, where “the woman that is foolish and brazen-faced, and become destitute of bread,” invites the passers-by with the words, “Come and make a pleasant feast on hidden bread, and the sweetness of stolen waters.”1580 For the woman thus spoken of is the vanity 1579 1 Cor. iii. 6. 1580 Prov. ix. 13–17, according to the Septuagint, where, in verse 13, פתיות is rendered ἐνδεὴς ψωμοῦ, “in want of a morsel of bread,” as if from פת or פתות , a morsel. The form of the word, however, as well as the Masoretic pointing, shows its connection with פתי in the sense of “simplicity” or “folly” personified. And again in verse 17, the LXX. have partly inverted the Hebrew order of the words, and translate ימתקו (“are sweet”) in its active sense of “taste with relish” (or pleasure), as if it were מתקו , Imperative; and read ינעם (“is sweet”) of the impious, who, utterly senseless as they are, fancy that they know something, just as was said of that woman, that she had “become destitute of bread;” who, though destitute of a single loaf, promises loaves; in other words, though ignorant of the truth, she promises the knowledge of the truth. But it is bread of a hidden character she promises, and which she declares is partaken of with pleasure, as well as the sweetness of stolen waters; in order that what is publicly forbidden to be uttered or believed in the Church, may be listened to and acted upon with willingness and relish. For by such secrecy profane teachers give a kind of seasoning to their poisons for the curious, that thereby they may imagine that they learn something great, because counted worthy of holding a secret, and may imbibe the more sweetly the folly which they regard as wisdom, the hearing of which, as a thing prohibited, they are represented as stealing.

3. Hence the system of magical arts commends its nefarious rites to those who are deceived, or ready to be so, by a sacrilegious curiosity. Hence, also, those unlawful divinations by the inspection of the entrails of slain animals, or of the cries and flights of birds, or of multiform demoniacal signs, are distilled by converse with abandoned wretches into the ears of persons who are on the brink of destruction. And it is because of these unlawful and punishable secrets that the woman mentioned above is styled not merely “foolish,” but also “audacious.” But such things are alien not only to the reality, but to the very name of our religion. And what shall we say of this foolish and brazen-faced woman seasoning, as she does, so many wicked heresies, and serving up so many detestable fables with Christian forms of expression? Would that they were only such as are found in theatres, whether as the subjects of song or dancing, or turned into ridicule by a mimicking buffoonery; and not, some of them, such as makes us grieve at the foolishness, while wondering at the audacity that could have contrived them, against God! And yet all these utterly senseless heretics, who wish to be styled Christians, attempt to color the audacities of their devices, which are perfectly ahorrent to every human feeling, with the chance presented to them of that gospel sentence uttered by the Lord, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now:” as if these were the very things which the apostles could not then bear, and as if the Holy Spirit had taught them what the unclean spirit, with all the length he can carry his audacity, blushes to teach and to preach in broad daylight.

4. It is such whom the apostle foresaw through the Holy Spirit, when he said: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”1581 For that mentioning of secrecy and in the last clause, as if it were נעים or נעם , “sweet,” or “sweetness:” hence Augustin’s rendering above. The Vulgate corresponds more nearly with the Hebrew and our English version.—Tr. 1581 2 Tim. iv. 3, 4. theft, whereof it is said, “Partake with pleasure of hidden bread and the sweetness of stolen waters,” creates an itching in those who listen with ears that are lusting after spiritual fornication, just as by a kind of itching also of desire in the flesh the soundness of chastity is corrupted. Hear, therefore, how the apostle foresaw such things, and gave salutary admonition about avoiding them, when he said, “Shun profane novelties of words; for they increase unto much ungodliness, and their speech insinuates itself as doth a cancer.”1582 He did not say novelties of words merely; but added, “profane.” For there are also novelties of words in perfect harmony with religious doctrine, as is told us in Scripture of the very name of Christians, when it began to be used. For it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians after the Lord’s ascension, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles:1583 and certain houses were afterwards called by the new names of hospices1584 and monasteries; but the things themselves existed prior to their names, and are confirmed by religious truth, which also forms their defense against the wicked. In opposition also to the impiety of Arian heretics, they coined the new term, Patris Homousios;1585 but there was nothing new signified by such a name; for what is called Homousios is just this: “I and my Father are one,”1586 to wit, of one and the same substance. For if every novelty were profane, as little should we have it said by the Lord, “A new commandment I give unto you;”1587 nor would the Testament be called New, nor the new song be sung throughout the whole earth. But there is profanity in the novelties of words, when it is said by “the foolish and audacious woman, Come and enjoy the tasting of hidden bread, and the sweetness of stolen waters.” From such enticing words of false science the apostle also gives his prohibitory warning, in the passage where he says, “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane novelties of expression, and oppositions of science falsely so called; which some professing, have erred concerning the faith.”1588 For there is nothing that these men so love as to profess science, and to deride as utter silliness faith in those verities which the young are enjoined to believe.

5. But some one will say, Have spiritual men nothing in the matter of doctrine, which they are to say nothing about to the carnal, but to speak out upon to the spiritual? If I shall answer, They have not, I shall be immediately met with the words of the Apostle Paul in his 1582 2 Tim. ii. 16, 17. Augustin translates κενοφωνίας (“babblings,” “empty utterances,” vaniloquia, Vulgate) as if it read καινοφωνίας, “novelties of words.”—Tr. 1583 Acts xi. 26. 1584 Xenodochia, houses of entertainment for strangers. 1585 “Of the same essence (or substance) with the Father,” as applied to Christ. 1586 Chap. x. 30. 1587 Chap. xiii. 34. 1588 1 Tim. vi. 20, 21. Epistle to the Corinthians: “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. As unto babes in Christ I have given you milk to drink, and not meat to eat: for hitherto ye were not able; neither yet now are ye able; for ye are yet carnal;”1589 and with these, “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect;” and with these also, “Comparing spiritual things with spiritual: but the natural man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him.”1590 The meaning of all this, in order that these words of the apostle may no longer lead to the hankering after secrets through the profane novelties of verbiage, and that what ought always to be shunned by the spirit and body of the chaste may not be asserted as only unable to be borne by the carnal, we shall, with the Lord’s permission, make the subject of dissertation in another discourse, so that for the time we may bring the present to a close.

1. From the words of our Lord, where He says, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” there arose a difficult question, which I recollect to have put off, that it might be handled afterwards at greater leisure, because my last discourse had reached its proper limits, and required to be brought to a close. And now, accordingly, as we have time to redeem our promise, let us take up its discussion as the Lord Himself shall grant us ability, who put it into our heart to make the proposal. And the question is this: Whether spiritual men have aught in doctrine which they should withhold from the carnal, but declare to the spiritual. For if we shall say, They have not, we shall meet with the reply, What, then, is to be made of the words of the apostle in writing to the Corinthians: “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. As unto babes in Christ, I have given you milk to drink, and not meat to eat: for hitherto ye were not able; neither yet now are ye able; for ye are yet carnal?”1591 But if we say, They have, we have cause to fear and take heed, lest under such a pretext detestable doctrines be taught in secret, and under the name of spiritual, as things which cannot be understood by the carnal, may seem not only capable of being whitewashed by plausible excuses, but deserving also to be lauded in preaching.

2. In the first place, then, your Charity ought to know that it is Christ Himself as crucified, wherewith the apostle says that he has fed those who are babes as with milk; but His flesh itself, in which was witnessed His real death, that is, both His real wounds when transfixed and His blood when pierced, does not present itself to the minds of the carnal in the same manner as to that of the spiritual, and so to the former it is milk, and to the latter it is meat; for if they do not hear more than others, they understand better. For the mind has not equal powers of perception even for that which is equally received by both in faith. And so it happens that the preaching of Christ crucified, by the apostle, was at once to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness; and to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God, and the wisdom of God;”1592 but to the carnal, as babes who held it only as a matter of faith, and to the spiritual, as those of greater capacity, who perceived it as a matter of understanding; to the former, therefore, as a milk-draught, to the latter as solid food: not that the former knew it in one way out in the world at large, and the latter in another way in their secret chambers; but that what both heard in the same measure when it was publicly spoken, each apprehended in his own measure. For inasmuch as Christ was crucified for the very purpose of shedding His blood for the remission of sins, and of divine 1591 1 Cor. iii. 1, 2. 1592 1 Cor. i. 23, 24. grace being thereby commended in the passion of His Only-begotten, that no one should glory in man, what understanding had they of Christ crucified who were still saying, “I am of Paul”?1593 Was it such as Paul himself had, who could say, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”?1594 In regard, therefore, even to Christ crucified, he himself found food in proportion to his own capacity, and nourished them with milk in accordance with their infirmity. And still further, knowing that what he wrote to the Corinthians might doubtless be understood in one way by those who were still babes, and differently by those of greater capacity, he said, “If any one among you is a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandment of the Lord; but if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant.”1595 Assuredly he would have the knowledge of the spiritual to be substantial, wherever not only faith had found a suitable abode, but a certain power of understanding was possessed; and whereby such believed those very things which as spiritual they likewise acknowledged. But “let him be ignorant,” he says, who “is ignorant;” because it was not yet revealed to him to know that which he believes. When this takes place in a man’s mind, he is said to be known of God; for it is God who endows him with this power of understanding, as it is elsewhere said, “But now, knowing God, or rather, being known of God.”1596 For it was not then that God first knew those who were foreknown and chosen before the foundation of the world;1597 but then it was that He made them to know Himself.

3. Having ascertained this, therefore, at the outset, that the very things, which are equally heard by the spiritual and the carnal, are received by each according to the slender measure of his own capacity,—by some as babes, by others as those of riper years,—by one as milk nourishment, by another as solid food,—there seems no necessity for any matters of doctrine being retained in silence as secrets, and concealed from infant believers, as things to be spoken of apart to those who are older, or possessed of a riper understanding; and let us regard it as needful to act thus, just because of the words of the apostle, “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.” For even this very statement of his, that he knew nothing among them but Jesus Christ and Him crucified,1598 he could not speak unto them as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal; because even that they were not able to receive as spiritual. But all who were spiritual among them received with spiritual understanding the very same truths which the others only heard as carnal; and in this way may we under- 1593 1 Cor. i. 12. 1594 Gal. vi. 14. 1595 1 Cor. xiv. 37, 38. 1596 Gal. iv. 9. 1597 Eph. i. 4. 1598 1 Cor. ii. 2. stand the words, “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal,” as if he said, What I did speak, ye could not receive as spiritual, but as carnal. For “the natural man”—that is, the man whose wisdom is of a mere human kind, and is called natural [literally, soulish] from the soul, and carnal from the flesh, because the complete man consists of soul and flesh—“perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;”1599 that is, the measure of grace bestowed on believers by the cross of Christ, and thinks that all that is effected by that cross is to provide us with an example for our imitation in contending even to death for the truth. For if men of this type, who have no desire to be aught else than men, knew how it is that Christ crucified is “made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord,”1600 they would doubtless no longer glory in man, nor say in a carnal spirit, “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas;” but in a spiritual way, “I am of Christ.”1601

4. But the question is still further raised by what we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “When now for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again to be taught which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk hath no experience in the word of righteousness; for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are perfect, even those who by habit have their senses exercised to distinguish good from evil.”1602 For here we see, as if clearly defined, what he calls the strong meat of the perfect; and which is the same as that which he writes to the Corinthans, “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect.”1603 But who it was that he wished in this passage to be understood as perfect, he proceeded to indicate in the words, “Even those who by habit have their senses exercised to distinguish good from evil.” Those, therefore, who, through a weak and undisciplined mind, are destitute of this power, will certainly, unless enabled by what may be called the milk of faith to believe both the invisible things which they see not, and the comprehensible things which they do not yet comprehend, be easily seduced by the promise of science to vain and sacrilegious fables: so as to think both of good and evil only under corporeal forms, and to have no idea of God Himself save as some sort of body, and be able only to view evil as a substance; while there is rather a kind of falling away from the immutable Substance in the case of all mutable substances, which were made out of nothing by the immutable and supreme substance itself, which is God. And assuredly whoever not only believes, but also through the exercised inner senses of his mind understands, and perceives, and knows this, there is no longer cause for 1599 1 Cor. ii. 14. 1600 1 Cor. i. 30, 31. 1601 1 Cor. i. 12. 1602 Heb. v. 12–14. 1603 1 Cor. ii. 6. fear that he will be seduced by those who, while accounting evil to be a substance uncreated by God, make God Himself a mutable substance, as is done by the Manicheans, or any other pests, if such there be, that fall into similar folly.

5. But to those who are still babes in mind, and who as carnal, the apostle says, require to be nourished with milk, all discoursing on such a subject, wherein we deal not only with the believing, but also with the understanding and the knowing of what is spoken, must be burdensome, as being still unable to perceive such things, and be more fitted to oppress than to feed them. Whence it comes to pass that the spiritual, while not altogether silent on such subjects to the carnal, because of the Catholic faith which is to be preached to all, yet do not so handle them as, in their wish to simplify them to understandings that are still deficient in capacity, to bring their discourse on the truth into disrepute, rather than the truth that is in their discourse within the perceptions of their hearers. Accordingly in his Epistle to the Colossians he says: “And though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and that which is lacking1604 in your faith in Christ.”1605 And in that to the Thessalonians: “Night and day,” he says, “praying more abundantly, that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith.”1606 Here we are, of course, to understand those who were under such primary catechetical instruction, as implied their nourishment with milk and not with strong meat; of the former of which there is mention made in the Epistle to the Hebrews of an abundant supply for such as nevertheless he would now have had to be feeding on solid food. Accordingly he says: “Therefore leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us have regard to the completion; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of the baptismal font, and of the laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”1607 This is the copious supply of milk, without which even they cannot live, who have already indeed their reason sufficiently in use to enable them to believe, but who cannot distinguish good from evil, so as to be not only a matter of faith, but also of understanding (which belongs to the department of solid food). But when he includes doctrine also in his description of the milk, it is that which has been delivered to us in the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.

1. What is this that the Lord said of the Holy Spirit, when promising that He would come and teach His disciples all truth, or guide them into all truth: “For He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak”? For this is similar to what He said of Himself, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge.”1614 But when expounding that, we said that it might be taken as referring to His human nature;1615 so that He seemed as the Son to announce beforehand that His own obedience, whereby He became obedient even unto the death of the cross,1616 would have its place also in the judgment, when He shall judge the quick and the dead; for He shall do so for the very reason that He is the Son of man. Wherefore He said, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son;” for in the judgment He will appear, not in the form of God, wherein He is equal to the Father, and cannot be seen by the wicked, but in the form of man, in which He was made even a little lower than the angels; although then He will come in glory, and not in His original humility, yet in a way that will be conspicuous both to the good and to the bad. Hence He says further: “And He hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.”1617 In these words of His own it is made clear that it is not that form that will be presented in the judgment, wherein He was when He thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but that which He assumed when He made Himself of no reputation.1618 For He emptied Himself in assuming the form of a servant;1619 in which, also, for the purpose of executing judgment, He seems to have com- mended His obedience, when He said, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge.” For Adam, by whose disobedience, as that of one man, many were made sinners, did not judge as he heard; for he prevaricated what he heard, and of his own self did the evil that he did; for he did not the will of God, but his own: while this latter, by whose obedience, as that also of one man, many are made righteous,1620 was not only obedient even unto the death of the cross, in respect of which He was judged as alive from the dead; but promised also that He would be showing obedience in the very judgment itself, wherein He is yet to act as judge of the quick and the dead, when He said, “I can of mine own self do nothing: 1614 Chap. v. 30. 1615 Tracts. XIX.–XXII. 1616 Phil. ii. 8. 1617 Chap. v. 22, 27. 1618 Literally, “when He emptied Himself.” 1619 Phil. ii. 6, 7. 1620 Rom. v. 19. as I hear, I judge.” But when it is said of the Holy Spirit, “For He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak,” shall we dare to harbor the notion that it was so said in reference to any human nature of His, or the assumption of any creatureform? For it was the Son alone in the Trinity who assumed the form of a servant, a form which in His case was fitted into the unity of His person, or, in other words, that the one person, Jesus Christ, should be the Son of God and the Son of man; and so that we should be kept from preaching a quaternity instead of the Trinity, which God forbid that we should do. And it is on account of this one personality as consisting of two substances, the divine and the human, that He sometimes speaks in accordance with that wherein He is God, as when He says, “I and my Father are one;”1621 and sometimes in accordance with His manhood, as in the words, “For the Father is greater than I;”1622 in accordance with which also we have understood those words of His that are at present under discussion, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge.” But in reference to the person of the Holy Spirit, a considerable difficulty arises how we are to understand the words, “For He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak;” since in it there exists not one substance of Godhead and another of humanity, or of any other creature whatsoever.

2. For the fact that the Holy Spirit appeared in bodily form, as a dove,1623 was a sight begun and ended at the time: just as also, when He descended upon the disciples, there were seen upon them cloven tongues as of fire, which also sat upon every one of them.1624 Any one, therefore, who says that the dove was connected with the Holy Spirit in the unity of His person, as that it and Godhead (for the Holy Spirit is God) should go to constitute the one person of the Holy Spirit, is compelled also to affirm the same thing of that fire; and so may understand that he ought to assert neither. For those things in regard to the substance of God, which needed at any time to be represented in some outward way, and so exhibited themselves to men’s bodily senses, and then passed away, were formed for the moment by divine power from the subservient creation, and not from the dominant nature itself; which, ever abiding the same, excites into action whatever it pleases; and, itself unchangeable, changes all things else at its pleasure. In the same way also did that voice from the cloud actually strike upon the bodily ears, and on that bodily sense which is called the hearing;1625 and yet in no way are we to believe that the Word of God, which is the only-begotten Son, is defined, because He is called the Word, by syllables and sounds: for when a sermon is in course of delivery, all the sounds cannot be pronounced simultaneously; but the various 1621 Chap. x. 30. 1622 Chap. xiv. 28. 1623 Matt. iii. 16. 1624 Acts ii. 3. 1625 Luke ix. 35. individual sounds come, as it were, in their own order to the birth, and succeed those which are dying away, so that all that we have to say is completed only by the last syllable. Very different from this, surely, is the way in which the Father speaketh to the Son, that is to say, God to God, His Word. But this, so far as it can be understood by man, is a matter for the understanding of those who are fitted for the reception of solid food, and not of milk. Since, therefore, the Holy Spirit became not man by any assumption of humanity, and became not an angel by any assumption of angelic nature, and as little entered into the creature-state by the assumption of any creature-form whatever, how, in regard to Him, are we to understand those words of our Lord, “For He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak”? A difficult question; yea, too difficult. May the Spirit Himself be present, that, at least up to the measure of our power of thinking on such a subject, we may be able to express our thoughts, and that these, according to the little measure of my ability, may find entrance into your understanding.

3. You ought, then, to be informed in the first place, and, those of you who can, to understand, and the others, who cannot as yet understand, to believe, that in that substantial essence, which is God, the senses are not, as if through some material structure of a body, distributed in their appropriate places; as, in the mortal flesh of all animals there is in one place sight, in another hearing, in another taste, in another smelling, and over the whole the sense of touch. Far be it from us to believe so in the case of that incorporeal and immutable nature. In it, therefore, hearing and seeing are one and the same thing. In this way smelling also is said to exist in God; as the apostle says, “As Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.”1626 And taste may be included, in accordance with which God hateth the bitter in temper, and spueth out of His mouth those who are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot:1627 and Christ our God1628 saith, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.”1629 There is also that divine sense of touch, in accordance with which the spouse saith of the bridegroom: “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me.”1630 But these are not in God’s case in different parts of the body. For when He is said to know, all are included: both seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and tasting, and touching; without any alteration of His substance, and without the existence of any material element which is greater in one place and smaller in another: and when there are any such thoughts of God in those even who are old in years, they are the thoughts only of a childish mind.

1. When our Lord gave the promise of the coming of His Holy Spirit, He said, “He shall teach you all truth,” or, as we read in some copies, “He shall guide you into all truth. For He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak.” On these Gospel words we have already discoursed as the Lord enabled us; and now give your attention to those that follow. “And He will show you,” He said, “things to come.” Over this, which is perfectly plain, there is no need to linger; for it contains no question that demands from us any regular exposition. But the words that He proceeds to add, “He shall make me clearly known;1651 for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you,” are not to be carelessly passed over. For by the words, “He shall make me clearly known,” we may understand, that by shedding abroad [God’s] love in the hearts of believers, and making them spiritual, He showed them how it was that the Son was equal to the Father, whom previously they had only known according to the flesh, and as men themselves had thought of Him only as man. Or at least that, filled themselves through that very love with boldness, and divested of all fear, they might proclaim Christ unto men; and so His fame be spread abroad through the whole world. So that He said, “He shall make me clearly known,” as if meaning, He shall free you from fear, and endow you with a love that will so inflame your zeal in preaching me, that you will send forth the odor, and commend the honor of, my glory throughout the world. For what they were to do in the Holy Spirit, He said that the Spirit Himself would also do, as is implied in the words, “For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.”1652 The Greek word, indeed, which is δοξάσει, has been rendered by the Latin interpreters in their respective translations, clarificabit (“shall make clearly known”) by one, and glorificabit (“shall glorify”) by another: for the idea expressed in Greek by the one term δόξα, from which is derived the verb δοξάσει, may be interpreted both by claritas (brightness) and gloria (glory). For by glory every one becomes bright, and glorious by brightness; and hence what is signified by both words, is one and the same thing. And, as the most famous writers of the Latin tongue in olden time have defined it, glory is the generally diffused and accepted fame of any one accompanied with praise. But when this happened in the world in regard to Christ, we are not to suppose that it was the bestowing of any great thing on Christ, but on the world. For to praise what is good is not of benefit to that which receives, but to those who give the commendation.

2. But there is also a false glory, when the praise given is the result of a mistake, whether in regard to things or to persons, or to both. For men are mistaken in regard to things, when 1651 Clarificabit: see below. 1652 Matt. x. 20. they think that to be good which is evil; and in regard to persons, when they think one to be good who is evil; and in regard to both, when what is actually a vice is esteemed a virtue; and when he who is praised for something is destitute of what he is supposed to have, whether he be good or evil. To credit vain-glorious persons1653 with the things they profess, is surely a huge vice, and not a virtue; and yet you know how common is the laudatory fame of such; for, as Scripture says, “The sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who practises iniquity is blessed.”1654 Here those who praise are not mistaken in the persons, but in the things; for that is evil which they believe to be good. But those who are morally corrupted with the evil of prodigality are undoubtedly such as those who praise them do not simply suspect, but perceive them to be. But further, if one feign himself a just man, and be not so, but, as regards all that he seems to do in a praiseworthy way in the sight of men, does it not for God’s sake, that is, for the sake of true righteousness, but makes glory from men the only glory he seeks and hankers after; while those with whom his extolled fame is generally accepted think of him only as living in a praiseworthy way for God’s sake,—they are not mistaken in the thing, but are deceived in the person. For that which they believe to be good, is good; but the person whom they believe to be good, is the reverse. But if, for example, skill in magical arts be esteemed good, and any one, so long as he is believed to have delivered his country by those same arts whereof all the while he is utterly ignorant, attain amongst the irreligious to that generally accepted renown which is defined as glory, those who so praise err in both respects; to wit, both in the thing, for they esteem that good which is evil; and in the person, for he is not at all what they suppose him. But when, in regard to any one who is righteous by God’s grace and for God’s sake, in other words, truly righteous, there is on account of that very righteousness a generally accepted fame of a laudatory kind, then the glory is indeed a true one; and yet we are not to suppose that thereby the righteous man is made blessed, but rather those who praise him are to be congratulated, because they judge rightly, and love the righteous. And how much more, then, did Christ the Lord, by His own glory, benefit, not Himself, but those whom He also benefited by His death?

3. But that is not a true glory which He has among heretics, with whom, nevertheless, He appears to have a generally accepted fame accompanied with praise. Such is no true glory, because in both respects they are mistaken, for they both think that to be good which 1653 Histrionibus, literally, play-actors. 1654 Ps. x. 3. Augustin here, as usual, follows the Septuagint. הִלֵּל (praise), however, is not passive, but, instead of its usual accusative, takes עַל with the subject of praise, and is rendered with sufficient accuracy in the English version. בֵּרֵךְ , also, must be translated actively, with “the covetous,” or “the defrauder,” as its nominative: and the verse should thus read, “The wicked boasteth of his soul’s desire, and the defrauder blesseth [and] blasphemeth Jehovah.” It would be natural enough in the defrauder to do both.—Tr. is not good, and they suppose Christ to be what Christ is not. For to say that the only-begotten Son is not equal to Him that begat, is not good: to say that the only-begotten Son of God is man only, and not God, is not good: to say that the flesh of the Truth is not true flesh, is not good. Of the three doctrines which I have stated, the first is held by the Arians, the second by the Photinians, and the third by the Manicheans. But inasmuch as there is nothing in any of them that is good, and Christ has nothing to do with them, in both respects they are in the wrong; and they attach no true glory to Christ, although there may appear to be amongst them a generally accepted fame regarding Christ of a laudatory character. And accordingly all heretics together, whom it would be too tedious to enumerate, who have not right views regarding Christ, err on this account, that their views are untrue regarding both good things and evil. The pagans, also, of whom great numbers are lauders of Christ, are themselves also mistaken in both respects, saying, as they do, not in accordance with the truth of God, but rather with their own conjectures, that He was a magician. For they reproach Christians as being destitute of skill; but Christ they laud as a magician, and so betray what it is that they love: Christ indeed they do not love, since what they love is that which Christ never was. And thus, then, in both respects they are in error, for it is wicked to be a magician; and as Christ was good, He was not a magician. Wherefore, as we have nothing to say in this place of those who malign and blaspheme Christ,—for it is of His glory we speak, wherewith He was glorified in the world,—it was only in the holy Catholic Church that the Holy Spirit glorified Him with His true glory. For elsewhere, that is, either among heretics or certain pagans, the glory He has in the world cannot be a true one, even where there is a generally accepted fame of Him accompanied with praise. His true glory, therefore, in the Catholic Church is celebrated in these words by the prophet: “Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; and Thy glory above all the earth.” 1655 Accordingly, that after His exaltation the Holy Spirit was to come, and to glorify Him, the sacred psalm, and the Only-begotten Himself, promised as an event of the future, which we see accomplished.

4. But when He says, “He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you,” listen thereto with Catholic ears, and receive it with Catholic minds. For not surely on that account, as certain heretics have imagined, is the Holy Spirit inferior to the Son; as if the Son received from the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the Son, in reference to certain gradations of natures. Far be it from us to believe this, or to say it, and from Christian hearts to think it. In fine, He Himself straightway solved the question, and explained why He said so. “All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore, said I, that He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.” What would you more? The Holy Spirit thus receives of the Father, of whom the Son receives; for in this Trinity the Son is born of the Father, and from the Father the Holy Spirit proceedeth. He, however, who is born of none, and proceedeth from none, 1655 Ps. cviii. 5. is the Father alone. But in what sense it is that the only-begotten Son said, “All things that the Father hath are mine” (for it certainly was not in the same sense as when it was said to that son, who was not only begotten, but the elder of two, “Thou art ever with me; and all that I have is thine),”1656 will have our careful consideration, if the Lord so will, in connection with the passage where the Only-begotten saith to the Father, “And all mine are Thine, and Thine are mine;”1657 so that our present discourse may be here brought to a close, as the words that follow require a different opening for their discussion.

1. These words of the Lord, when He says, “A little while, and ye shall no more see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me; because I go to the Father,” were so obscure to the disciples, before what He thus says was actually fulfilled, that they inquired among themselves what it was that He said, and had to confess themselves utterly ignorant. For the Gospel proceeds, “Then said some of His disciples among themselves, What is this that He saith unto us, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me; and, Because I go to the Father? They said therefore, What is this that He saith, A little while? we know not what He saith.” This is what moved them, that He said, “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me.” For in what precedes, because He had not said, “A little while,” but only, “I go to the Father and ye shall see me no more,”1658 He appeared to them to have spoken, as it were, quite plainly, and they had no inquiry among themselves, regarding it. But now, what was then obscure to them, and was shortly afterwards revealed, is already perfectly manifest to us: for after a little while He suffered, and they saw Him not; again, after a little while He rose, and they saw Him. But how the words are to be taken that He used, “Ye shall no more see me,” inasmuch as by the word “more” 1659 He wished it to be understood that they would not see Him afterwards, we have explained at the passage where He said, The Holy Spirit “shall convince of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more;”1660 meaning thereby, that they would never afterwards see Christ in His present state of subjection to death.

2. “Now Jesus knew,” as the evangelist proceeds to say, “that they were desirous to ask Him, and said unto them, Ye inquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me. Verily verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy:” which may be understood in this way, that the disciples were thrown into sorrow over the death of the Lord, and straightway were filled with joy at His resurrection; but the world, whereby are signified the enemies that slew Christ, were, of course, in a state of rapture over the murder of Christ, at the very time when the disciples were filled with sorrow. For by the name of the world the wickedness of this world may be understood; in other words, those who are the friends of this world. As the Apostle James 1658 Chap. xvi. 10. 1659 The English version has here, “Ye shall not see me,” reading οὐ in the original, with the Alexandrine Codex. Several of the others, however (including the Sinaitic), have οὐκέτι (“no more”), rendered by Augustin jam non, which has thus the greater weight of authority on its side.—Tr. 1660 Above, Tract. XCV. says in his epistle, “Whosoever will be a friend of this world, is become the enemy of God;”1661 for the effect of that enmity to God was, that not even His Only-begotten was spared.

3. And then He goes on to say, “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” Nor does the metaphor here employed seem difficult to understand; for its key is at hand in the exposition given by Himself of its meaning. For the pangs of parturition are compared to sorrow, and the birth itself to joy; which is usually all the greater when it is not a girl but a boy that is born. But when He said, “Your joy no man taketh from you,” for their joy was Jesus Himself, there is implied what was said by the apostle, “Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; and death shall have no more dominion over Him.”1662

4. Hitherto in this section of the Gospel, whereon we are discoursing to-day, the tenor of everything has been, I may say, of easy understanding: a much closer attention is needful in connection with the words that follow. For what does He mean by the words, “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing”? The verb to ask, used here, means not only to beg of, but also to question; and the Greek Gospel, of which this is a translation, has a word that may also be understood in both senses, so that by it the ambiguity is not removed;1663 and even though it were so, every difficulty would not thereby disappear. For we read that the Lord Christ, after He rose again, was both questioned and petitioned. He was asked by the disciples, on the eve of His ascension into heaven, when He would be manifested, and when the kingdom of Israel would come;1664 and even when already in heaven, He was petitioned [asked] by St. Stephen to receive his spirit.1665 And who dare either think or say that Christ ought not to be asked, sitting as He does in heaven, and yet was asked while He abode on earth? or that He ought not to be asked in His state of immortality, although it was men’s duty to ask Him while still in His state of subjection to death? Nay, beloved, let us ask Him to untie with His own hands the knot of our present inquiry, by so shining into our hearts that we may perceive what He saith.

5. For I think that His words, “But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you,” are not to be referred to the time of His resurrection, and when He showed them His flesh to be looked at and handled;1666 but rather to that of 1661 Jas. iv. 4. 1662 Rom. vi. 9. 1663 Greek, ἐρωτήσετε. 1664 Acts i. 6. 1665 Acts vii. 59. 1666 Chap. xx. 27. which He had already said, “He that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”1667 For He had already risen, He had already shown Himself to them in the flesh, and He was already sitting at the right hand of the Father, when that same Apostle John, whose Gospel this is, says in his epistle, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”1668 That vision belongs not to this life, but to the future; and is not temporal, but eternal. “And this is life eternal,” in the words of Him who is that life, “that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.”1669 Of this vision and knowledge the apostle says, “Now we see through a glass, in a riddle; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”1670 At present the Church is in travail with the longing for this fruit of all her labor, but then she shall bring to the birth in its actual contemplation; now she travails in birth with groaning, then shall she bring forth in joy; now she travails in birth through her prayers, then shall she bring forth in her praises. Thus, too, is it a male child; since to such fruit in the contemplation are all the duties of her present conduct to be referred. For He alone is free; because He is desired on His own account, and not in reference to aught besides. Such conduct is in His service; for whatever is done in a good spirit has a reference to Him, because it is done on His behalf; while He, on the other hand, is got and held in possession on His own account, and not on that of aught besides. And there, accordingly, we find the only end that is satisfying to ourselves. He will therefore be eternal; for no end can satisfy us, save that which is found in Him who is endless. With this was Philip inspired, when he said, “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” And in that showing the Son gave promise also of His own presence, when He said, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”1671 Of that, therefore, which alone sufficeth us, we are very appropriately informed, “Your joy no man taketh from you.”

6. On this point, also, in reference to what has been said above, I think we may get a still better understanding of the words, “A little while, and ye shall no more see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me.” For the whole of that space over which the present dispensation extends, is but a little while; and hence this same evangelist says in his epistle, “It is the last hour.”1672 For in this sense also He added, “Because I go to the Father,” which is to be referred to the preceding clause, where He saith, “A little while, and ye shall no more 1667 Chap. xiv. 21. 1668 1 John iii. 2. 1669 Chap. xvii. 3. 1670 1 Cor. xiii. 12. 1671 Chap. xiv. 8, 10. 1672 1 John ii. 18. see me;” and not to the subsequent, where He saith, “And again a little while, and ye shall see me.” For by His going to the Father, He was to bring it about that they should not see Him. And on this account, therefore, His words did not mean that He was about to die, and to be withdrawn from their view till His resurrection; but that He was about to go to the Father, which He did after His resurrection, and when, after holding intercourse with them for forty days, He ascended into heaven.1673 He therefore addressed the words, “A little while, and ye shall no more see me,” to those who saw Him at the time in bodily form; because He was about to go to the Father, and never thereafter to be seen in that mortal state wherein they now beheld Him when so addressing them. But the words that He added, “And again a little while, and ye shall see me,” He gave as a promise to the Church universal: just as to it, also, He gave the other promise, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”1674 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise: a little while, and we shall see Him, where we shall have no more any requests to make, any questions to put; for nothing shall remain to be desired, nothing lie hid to be inquired about. This little while appears long to us, because it is still in continuance; when it is over, we shall then feel what a little while it was. Let not, then, our joy be like that of the world, whereof it is said, “But the world shall rejoice;” and yet let not our sorrow in travailing in birth with such a desire be unmingled with joy; but, as the apostle says, be “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation;”1675 for even the woman in travail, to whom we are compared, has herself more joy over the offspring that is soon to be, than sorrow over her present pains. But let us here close our present discourse, for the words that follow contain a very trying question, and must not be unduly curtailed, so that they may, if the Lord will, obtain a more befitting explanation.

1. We have now to consider these words of the Lord, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father in my name, He will give it you.” It has already been said in the earlier portions of this discourse of our Lord’s, on account of those who ask some things of the Father in Christ’s name and receive them not, that there is nothing asked of the Father in the Saviour’s name that is asked in contrariety to the method of salvation.1676 For it is not the sound of the letters and syllables, but what the sound itself imports, and what is rightly and truly to be understood by that sound, that He is to be regarded as declaring, when He says, “in my name.” Hence, he who has such ideas of Christ as ought not to be entertained of the only Son of God, asketh not in His name, even though he may not abstain from the mention of Christ in so many letters and syllables; since it is only in His name he asketh, of whom he is thinking when he asketh. But he who has such ideas of Him as ought to be entertained, asketh in His name, and receiveth what he asketh, if he asketh nothing that is contrary to his own everlasting salvation. And he receiveth it when he ought to receive it. For some things are not refused, but are delayed till they can be given at a suitable time. In this way, surely, we are to understand His words, “He will give you,” so that thereby we may know that those benefits are signified which are properly applicable to those who ask. For all the saints are heard effectively1677 in their own behalf, but are not so heard in behalf of all besides, whether friends or enemies, or any others: for it is not said in a general kind of way, “He will give;” but, “He will give you.”

2. “Hitherto,” He says, “ye have not asked anything in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” This that He calls a full joy is certainly no carnal joy, but a spiritual one; and when it shall be so great as to be no longer capable of any additions to it, it will then doubtless be full. Whatever, then, is asked as belonging to the attainment of this joy, is to be asked in the name of Christ, if we understand the grace of God, and if we are truly in quest of a blessed life. But if aught different from this is asked, there is nothing asked: not that the thing itself is nothing at all, but that in comparison with what is so great, anything else that is coveted is virtually nothing. For, of course, the man is not actually nothing, of whom the apostle says, “He who thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing.”1678 But surely in comparison with the spiritual man, who knows that by the grace of God he is what he is, he who makes vain assumptions is nothing. In this way, then, may the words also be rightly understood, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask anything of the 1676 Above, Tract. LXXIII. 1677 Exaudiuntur, heard and answered. 1678 Gal. vi. 3. Father in my name, He will give [it] you;” that by the words, “if anything,” should not be understood anything whatever, but anything that is not really nothing in connection with the life of blessedness. And what follows, “Hitherto ye have not asked anything in my name,” may be understood in two ways: either, that ye have not asked in my name, because a name that ye have not known as it is yet to be known; or, ye have not asked anything, since in comparison with that which ye ought to have asked, what ye have asked is to be accounted as nothing. In order, then, that, they may ask in His name, not that which is nothing, but a full joy (since anything different from this that they ask is virtually nothing), He addresses to them the exhortation, “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full;” that is, ask this in my name, that your joy may be full, and ye shall receive. For His saints, who persevere in asking such a good thing as this, will in no wise be defrauded by the mercy of God.

3. “These things,” said He, “have I spoken to you in proverbs: but the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of my Father.” I might be disposed to say that this hour, whereof He speaketh, must be understood as that future period when we shall see openly, as the blessed Paul says, “face to face;” that what He says, “These things have I spoken to you in proverbs,” is one with what has been said by the same apostle, “Now we see through a glass, in a riddle:”1679 and “I will show you,” because the Father shall be seen through the instrumentality of the Son, is akin to what He says elsewhere, “Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and [he] to whom the Son shall be pleased to reveal Him.”1680 But such a sense seems to be interfered with by that which follows: “At that day ye shall ask in my name.” For in that future world, when we have reached the kingdom where we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,1681 what shall we then have to ask, when our desire shall be satisfied with good things?1682 As it is also said in another psalm: “I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall be revealed.”1683 For petition has to do with some kind of want, which can have no place there where such abundance shall reign.

1. The inward state of Christ’s disciples, when before His passion He talked with them as with children of great things, but in such a way as befitted the great things to be spoken to children, because, having not yet received the Holy Spirit, as they did after His resurrection, either by His own breathing upon them, or by descent from above, they had a mental capacity for the human rather than the divine,—is everywhere declared through the Gospel by numerous testimonies; and of a piece therewith, is what they said in the lesson before us. For, says the evangelist, “His disciples say unto Him: Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and utterest no proverb. Now we are sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee: by this we believe that Thou camest forth from God.” The Lord Himself had said shortly before, “These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak to you in proverbs.” How, then, say they, “Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and utterest no proverb”? Was the hour, indeed, already come, when He had promised that He would no more speak unto them in proverbs? Certainly that such an hour had not yet come, is shown by the continuation of His words, which run in this way: “These things,” said He, have I spoken unto you in proverbs: the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of my Father. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” (vers. 25–28). Seeing that throughout all these words He is still promising that hour when He shall no more speak in proverbs, but shall show them openly of the Father; the hour, when He says that they will ask in His name, and that He will not pray the Father for them, on the ground that the Father Himself loveth them, and that they also have loved Christ, and have believed that He came forth from the Father, and was come into the world, and was again about to leave the world and go to the Father: when thus that hour is still the subject of promise when He was to speak without proverbs, why say they, “Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and utterest no proverb;” but just because those things, which He knows to be proverbs to those who have no understanding, they are still so far from understanding, that they do not even understand that they do not understand them? For they were babes, and had as yet no spiritual discernment of what they heard regarding things that had to do not with the body, but with the spirit.

2. And still further admonishing them of their age as still small and infirm in regard to the inner man, “Jesus answered them: Do ye now believe? Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” He had said shortly before, “I leave the world, and go to the Father;” now He says, “The Father is with me.” Who goes to him who is with him? This is a word to him that understandeth, a proverb to him that understandeth not: and yet in such way that what at present is unintelligible to babes, is in some sort sucked in; and even though it yield them not solid food, which they cannot as yet receive, it denies them not at least a milky diet. It was from this diet that they drew the knowledge that He knew all things, and needed not that any one should ask Him: and, indeed, why they said this, is a topic worthy of inquiry. For one would think they ought rather to have said, Thou needest not to ask any one; not, “That any one should ask Thee.” They had just said, We are sure that Thou knowest all things:” and surely He that knoweth all things is accustomed rather to be questioned by those who do not know, that in reply to their questions they may hear what they wish from Him who knoweth all things; and not to be Himself the questioner, as if wishing to know something, when He knoweth all things. What, then, are we to understand by this, that, when apparently they ought to have said to Him, whom they knew to be omniscient, Thou needest not to ask any man, they considered it more befitting to say, “Thou needest not that any man should ask Thee”? Yea, is it not the case that we read of both being done; to wit, that the Lord both asked, and was asked questions? But this latter is speedily answered: for this was needful not for Him, but for those rather whom He questioned, or by whom He was questioned. For He never questioned any for the purpose of learning anything from them, but for the purpose rather of teaching them. And for those who put questions to Him, as desirous of learning something of Him, it was assuredly needful to be made acquainted with some things by Him who knew everything. And doubtless on the same account also it was that He needed not that any man should ask Him. As it is the case that we, when questioned by those who wish to get some information from us, discover by their very questionings what it is that they wish to know, we therefore need to be questioned by those whom we wish to teach, in order that we may be acquainted with their inquiries that call for an answer: but He, who knew all things, had no need even of that, and as little need had He of discovering by their questions what it was that any one desired to know of Him, for before a question was put, He knew the intention of him who was to put it. But He suffered Himself to be questioned on this account, that He might show to those who were then present, or to those who should either hear the things that were to be spoken or read them when written, what was the character of those by whom He was questioned; and in this way we might come to know both the frauds that were powerless to impose upon Him, and the ways of approach that would turn to our profit in His sight. But to foresee the thoughts of men, and thus to have no need that any one should ask Him, was no great matter for God, but great enough for the babes, who said to Him, “By this we believe that Thou camest forth from God.” A much greater thing it was, for the understanding of which He wished to have their minds expanded and enlarged, that, on their saying, and saying truly, “Thou camest forth from God,” He replied, “The Father is with me;” in order that they should not think that the Son had come forth from the Father in any sense that would lead them to suppose that He had also withdrawn from His presence.

3. And then, in bringing to a close this weighty and protracted discourse, He said, “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” The beginning of such tribulation was to be found in that whereof, in order to show that they were infants, to whom, as still wanting in intelligence, and mistaking one thing for another, all the great and divine things He had said were little better than proverbs, He had previously said, “Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own.” Such, I say, was the beginning of the tribulation, but not in the same measure of their perseverance. For in adding, “and ye shall leave me alone,” He did not mean that they would be of such a character in the subsequent tribulation, which they should have to endure in the world after His ascension, as thus to desert Him; but that in Him they should have peace by still abiding in Him. But on the occasion of His apprehension, not only did they outwardly abandon His bodily presence, but they mentally abandoned their faith. And to this it is that His words have reference, “Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, that ye shall be scattered to your own, and shall leave me:” as if He had said, You will then be so confounded as to leave behind you even what you now believe. For they fell into such despair and such a death, so to speak, of their old faith, as was apparent in the case of Cleophas, who, after His resurrection, unaware that he was speaking with Himself, and narrating what had befallen Him, said, “We trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel.”1689 That was the way in which they then left Him, abandoning even the very faith wherewith they had formerly believed in Him. But in that tribulation, which they encountered after His glorification and they themselves had received the Holy Spirit, they did not leave Him: and though they fled from city to city, from Himself they did not flee; but in order that, while having tribulation in the world, they might have peace in Him, instead of being fugitives from Him, it was rather Himself that they made their refuge. For in receiving the Holy Spirit, there was wrought in them the very state described to them now in the words, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” They were of good cheer, and they conquered. But in whom, save in Him? For He had not overcome the world, were it still to overcome His members. Hence said the apostle, “Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory;” and immediately added, “through our Lord Jesus Christ:” 1690 through Him who had said to His own, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

1. Before these words, which we are now, with the Lord’s help, to make the subject of discourse, Jesus had said, “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace;” which we are to consider as referring, not to the later words uttered by Him immediately before, but to all that He had addressed to them, whether from the time that He began to account them disciples, or at least from the time after supper when He commenced this admirable and lengthened discourse. He gave them, indeed, such a reason for speaking to them, that either all He ever spake to them may with the utmost propriety be referred to that end, or those especially, as His last words, which He now spake when on the eve of dying for them, after that he who was to betray Him had quitted their company. For He gave this as the cause of His discourse, that in Him they might have peace, just as it is wholly on this account that we are Christians. For this peace will have no temporal end, but will itself be the end of every pious intention and action that are ours at present. For its sake we are endowed with His sacraments, for its sake we are instructed by His works and sayings, for its sake we have received the earnest of the Spirit, for its sake we believe and hope in Him, and according to His gracious giving are enkindled with His love: by this peace we are comforted in all our distresses, by it we are delivered from them all: for its sake we endure with fortitude every tribulation, that in it we may reign in happiness without any tribulation. Fitly therewith did He bring His words to a close, which were proverbs to the disciples, who as yet had little understanding, but would afterwards understand them, when He had given them the Holy Spirit of promise, of whom He had said before: “These things have I spoken unto you being yet present with you. But the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”1691 Such, doubtless, was to be the hour, wherein He promised that He would no more speak unto them in proverbs, but show them openly of the Father. For these same words of His, when revealed by the Holy Spirit, were no more to be proverbs to those who had understanding. For when the Holy Spirit was speaking in their hearts, there was not to be silence on the part of the only-begotten Son, who had said that in that hour He would show them plainly of the Father, which, of course, would no longer be a proverb to them when now endowed with understanding. But even this also, how it is that both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit speak at once in the hearts of their spiritual ones, yea the Trinity itself, which is ever inseparably at work, is a word to those who have, but a proverb to those who are without, understanding.

1. That the Son was glorified by the Father in His form of a servant, which the Father raised from the dead and set at His own right hand, is indicated by the event itself, and is nowhere doubted by the Christian. But as He not only said, “Father, glorify Thy Son,” but likewise added, “that Thy Son may glorify Thee,” it is worthy of inquiry how it was that the Son glorified the Father, seeing that the eternal glory of the Father neither suffered diminution in any human form, nor could be increased in respect of its own divine perfection. In itself, indeed, the glory of the Father could neither be diminished nor enlarged; but without any doubt it was less among men when God was known only in Judea:1697 and as yet children1698 praised not the name of the Lord from the rising of the sun to its going down.1699 But inasmuch as this was effected by the gospel of Christ, to wit, that the Father became known through the Son to the Gentiles, assuredly the Son also glorified the Father. Had the Son, however, only died, and not risen again, He would without doubt have neither been glorified by the Father, nor have glorified the Father; but now having been glorified through His resurrection by the Father, He glorifies the Father by the preaching of His resurrection. For this is disclosed by the very order of the words: “Glorify,” He says, “Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee;” saying, as it were, Raise me up again, that by me Thou mayest become known to all the world.

2. And then expanding still further how it was that the Father should be glorified by the Son, He says: “As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to all that Thou hast given Him.” By all flesh, He meant every man, signifying the whole by a part; as, on the other hand, the whole man is signified by the superior part, when the apostle says, “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.” 1700 For what else did He mean by “every soul,” save every man? And this, therefore, that power over all flesh was given to Christ by the Father, is to be understood in respect of His humanity; for in respect of His Godhead all things were made by Himself, and in Him were created all things in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible.1701 “As,” then, He says, “Thou hast given Him power over all flesh,” so may Thy Son glorify Thee, in other words, make Thee known to 1697 Ps. lxxvi. 1. 1698 Ps. cxiii. 3, 1: pueri, from the LXX. παῖδες. The Hebrew is עַבְדֵי , “servants.”—Tr. 1699 Ps. cxiii. 3, 1: pueri, from the LXX. παῖδες. The Hebrew is עַבְדֵי , “servants.”—Tr. 1700 Rom. xiii. 1. 1701 Col. i. 16. all flesh whom Thou hast given Him. For Thou hast so given, “that He should give eternal life to all that Thou hast given Him.”

3. “And this,” He adds, “is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” The proper order of the words is, “That they may know Thee and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent, as the only true God.” Consequently, therefore, the Holy Spirit is also understood, because He is the Spirit of the Father and Son, as the substantial and consubstantial love of both. For the Father and Son are not two Gods, nor are the Father and Son and Holy Spirit three Gods; but the Trinity itself is the one only true God. And yet the Father is not the same as the Son, nor the Son the same as the Father, nor the Holy Spirit the same as the Father and the Son; for the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are three [persons], yet the Trinity itself is one God. If, then, the Son glorifies Thee in the same manner “as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh,” and hast so given, “that He should give eternal life to all that Thou hast given Him,” and “this is life eternal, that they may know Thee;” in this way, therefore, the Son glorifies Thee, that He makes Thee known to all whom Thou hast given Him. Accordingly, if the knowledge of God is eternal life, we are making the greater advances to life, in proportion as we are enlarging our growth in such a knowledge. And we shall not die in the life eternal; for then, when there shall be no death, the knowledge of God shall be perfected. Then will be effected the full effulgence of God, because then the completed glory, as expressed in Greek by δόξα. For from it we have the word δόξασον, that is used here, and which some Latins have interpreted by “clarifica” (make effulgent), and some by “glorifica” (glorify). But by the ancients, glory, from which men are styled glorious, is thus defined: Glory is the widely-spread fame of any one accompanied with praise. But if a man is praised when the fame regarding him is believed, how will God be praised when He Himself shall be seen? Hence it is said in Scripture, “Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; they will be praising Thee for ever and ever.”1702 There will God’s praise continue without end, where there shall be the full knowledge of God; and because the full knowledge, therefore also the complete effulgence or glorification.

4. But God is first of all glorified here, while He is being made known to men by word of mouth, and preached through the faith of believers. Wherefore, He says, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” He does not say, Thou orderedst; but, “Thou gavest:” where the evident grace of it is commended to notice. For what has the human nature even in the Only-begotten, that it has not received? Did it not receive this, that it should do no evil, but all good things, when it was assumed into the unity of His person by the Word, by whom all things were made? But how has He finished the work which was committed unto Him to do, when there still remains the trial of the 1702 Ps. lxxxiv. 4. passion wherein He especially furnished His martyrs with the example they were to follow, whereof, says the apostle Peter, “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps:” 1703 but just that He says He has finished, what He knew with perfect certainty that He would finish? Just as long before, in prophecy, He used words in the past tense, when what He said was to take place very many years afterwards: “They pierced,” He says, “my hands and my feet, they counted1704 all my bones;”1705 He says not, They will pierce, and, They will count. And in this very Gospel He says, “All things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you;”1706 to whom He afterward declares, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”1707 For He, who has predestinated all that is to be by sure and unchangeable causes, has done whatever He is to do: as it was also declared of Him by the prophet, “Who hath made the things that are to be.”1708

5. In a way similar, also, to this, He proceeds to say: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” For He had said above, “Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee:” in which arrangement of the words He had shown that the Father was first to be glorified by the Son, in order that the Son might glorify the Father. But now He said, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do; and now glorify Thou me;” as if He Himself had been the first to glorify the Father, by whom He then demands to be glorified. We are therefore to understand that He used both words above in accordance with that which was future, and in the order in which they were future, “Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee:” but that He now used the word in the past tense of that which was still future, when He said, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” And then, when He said, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self,” as if He were afterwards to be glorified by the Father, whom He Himself had first glorified; what did He intimate but that, when He said above, “I have glorified Thee on the earth,” He had so spoken as if He had done what He was still 1703 1 Pet. ii. 21. 1704 Ps. xxii. 16, 17. Dinumeraverunt (they counted), in accordance with a reading of the Septuagint—that found in the printed text—ἐξηρίθμησαν. A better reading, however, is also found in mss., ἐξήρίθμησα, conforming in person, though not in tense, to the Hebrew אֲכַפֵּר (I may count).—Tr. 1705 Ps. xxii. 16, 17. Dinumeraverunt (they counted), in accordance with a reading of the Septuagint—that found in the printed text—ἐξηρίθμησαν. A better reading, however, is also found in mss., ἐξήρίθμησα, conforming in person, though not in tense, to the Hebrew אֲכַפֵּר (I may count).—Tr. 1706 Chap. xv. 15. 1707 Chap. xvi. 12. 1708 Isa. xlv. 11, according to the Septuagint. See note, Tract. LXVIII. sec. 1. to do; but that here He demanded of the Father to do that whereby the Son should yet do so; in other words, that the Father should glorify the Son, by means of which glorification of the Son, the Son also was yet to glorify the Father? In fine, if, in connection with that which was still future, we put the verb also in the future tense, where He has used the past in place of the future tense, there will remain no obscurity in the sentence: as if He had said, “I will glorify Thee on the earth: I will finish the work which Thou hast given me to do; and now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self.” In this way it is as plain as when He says, “Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee:” and this is indeed the whole sentence, save that here we are told also the manner of that same glorification, which there was left unnoticed; as if the former were explained by the latter to those whose hearts it was able to stir, how it was that the Father should glorify the Son, and most of all how the Son also should glorify the Father. For in saying that the Father was glorified by Himself on the earth, but He Himself by the Father with the Father’s very self, He showed them assuredly the manner of both glorifications. For He Himself glorified the Father on earth by preaching Him to the nations; but the Father glorified Him with His own self in setting Him at His own right hand. But on that very account, when He says afterward in reference to the glorifying of the Father, “I have glorified Thee,” He preferred putting the verb in the past tense, in order to show that it was already done in the act of predestination, and what was with perfect certainty yet to take place was to be accounted as already done; namely, that the Son, having been glorified by the Father with the Father, would also glorify the Father on the earth.

6. But this predestination He still more clearly disclosed in respect of His own glorification, wherewith He was glorified by the Father, when He added, “With the glory which I had, before the world was, with Thee.” The proper order of the words is, “which I had with Thee before the world was.” To this apply His words, “And now glorify Thou me;” that is to say, as then, so also now: as then, by predestination; so also now, by consummation: do Thou in the world what had already been done with Thee before the world: do in its own time what Thou hast determined before all times. This, some have imagined, should be so understood as if the human nature, which was assumed by the Word, were converted into the Word, and the man were changed into God; yea, were we reflecting with some care on the opinions they have advanced, as if the humanity were lost in the Godhead. For no one would go the length of saying that out of such a transmutation of the humanity the Word of God is either doubled or increased, so that either what was one should now be two, or what was less should now be greater. Accordingly, if with His human nature changed and converted into the Word, the Word of God will still be as great as He was, and what He was, where is the humanity, if it is not lost?

7. But to this opinion, which I certainly do not see to be conformable to the truth, there is nothing to urge us, if, when the Son says, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was,” we understand the predestination of the glory of His human nature, as thereafter, from being mortal, to become immortal with the Father: and that this had already been done by predestination before the world was, as also in its own time it was done in the world. For if the apostle has said of us, “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world,”1709 why should it be thought incongruous with the truth, if the Father glorified our Head at the same time as He chose us in Him to be His members? For we were chosen in the same way as He was glorified; inasmuch as before the world was, neither we nor the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,1710 were yet in existence. But He who, in as far as He is His Word, of His own self “made even those things which are yet to come,” and “calleth those things which are not as though they were,”1711 certainly, in respect of His manhood as Mediator between God and men, was Himself glorified on our behalf by God the Father before the foundation of the world, if it be so that we also were then chosen in Him. For what saith the apostle? “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren: and whom He did predestinate, them He also called.”1712

8. But perhaps we shall have some fear in saying that He was predestinated, because the apostle seems to have said so only in reference to our being made conformable to His image. As if, indeed, any one, faithfully considering the rule of faith, were to deny that the Son of God was predestinated, who yet cannot deny that He was man. For it is rightly said that He was not predestinated in respect of His being the Word of God, God with God. For how could He be predestinated, seeing He already was what He was, without beginning and without ending, everlasting? But that, which as yet was not, had to be predestinated, in order that it might come to pass in its time, even as it was predestinated so to come before all times. Accordingly, whoever denies predestination of the Son of God, denies that He was also Himself the Son of man. But, on account of those who are disputatious, let us also on this subject listen to the apostle in the exordium of his epistles. For both in the first of his epistles, which is that to the Romans, and in the beginning of the epistle itself, we read: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called [to be] an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He had promised afore by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was made for Him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestinated1713 1709 Eph. i. 4. 1710 1 Tim. ii. 5. 1711 Rom. iv. 17. 1712 Rom. viii. 28–30. 1713 Rom. i. 1–4: ὁρισθέντος, determined, declared, not “predestinated,” which is a mistake of the Latin version used by Augustin.—Tr. the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”1714 In respect, then, of this predestination also, He was gloried before the world was, in order that His glory might be, by the resurrection from the dead, with the Father, at whose right hand He sitteth. Accordingly, when He saw that the time of this, His predestinated glorification, was now come, in order that what had already been done in predestination might also be done now in actual accomplishment, He said in His prayer, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was:” as if He had said, The glory which I had with Thee, that is, that glory which I had with Thee in Thy predestination, it is time that I should have with Thee also in sitting at Thy right hand. But as the discussion of this question has already kept us long, what follows must be taken into consideration in another discourse.

1. In this discourse we purpose speaking, as He gives us grace, on these words of the Lord which run thus: “I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world.” If He said this only of those disciples with whom He had supped, and to whom, before beginning His prayer, He had said so much, it can have nothing to do with that clarification, or, as others have translated it, glorification, whereof He was previously speaking, and whereby the Son clarifies or glorifies the Father. For what great glory, or what like glory, was it to become known to twelve, or rather eleven mortal creatures? But if, in saying, “I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world,” He wished all to be understood, even those who were still to believe on Him, as belonging to His great Church which was yet to be made up of all nations, and of which it is said in the psalm, “I will confess to Thee in the great Church [congregation];”1715 it is plainly that glorification wherewith the Son glorifies the Father, when He makes His name known to all nations and to so many generations of men. And what He says here, “I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world,” is similar to what He had said a little before, “I have glorified Thee upon the earth”, (ver. 4); putting both here and there the past for the future, as One who knew that it was predestinated to be done, and therefore saying that He had done what He had still to do, though without any uncertainty, in the future.

2. But what follows makes it more credible that His words, “I have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world,” were spoken by Him of those who were already His disciples, and not of all who were yet to believe on Him. For after these words, He added: “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me; and they have kept Thy word. Now they have known that all things, whatsoever Thou hast given me, are of Thee: for I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send me.” Although all these words also might have been said of all believers still to come, when that which was now a matter of hope had been turned into fact, inasmuch as they were words that still pointed to the future; yet we are impelled the more to understand Him as uttering them only of those who were at that time His disciples, by what He says shortly afterwards: “While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name: those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (ver. 12); meaning Judas, who betrayed Him, for He was the only one of the apostolic twelve that perished. And then He adds, “And now come I to Thee,” from which 1715 Ps. xxxv. 18. it is manifest that it was of His own bodily presence that He said, “While I was with them, I kept them,” as if already that presence were no longer with them. For in this way He wished to intimate His own ascension as in the immediate future, when He said, “And now come I to Thee:” going, that is, to the Father’s right hand; whence He is hereafter to come to judge the quick and the dead in the self-same bodily presence, according to the rule of faith and sound doctrine: for in His spiritual presence He was still, of course, to be with them after His ascension, and with the whole of His Church in this world even to the end of time.1716 We cannot, therefore, rightly understand of whom He said, “While I was with them, I kept them,” save as those only who believed on Him, whom He had already begun to keep by His bodily presence, but was now to leave without it, in order that He might keep them with the Father by His spiritual presence. Thereafter, indeed, He also unites with them the rest of His disciples, when He says, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on me through their word.” Where He shows still more clearly that He was not speaking before of all who belonged to Him, in the passage where He saith, “I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me,” but of those only who were listening to Him when He so spake.

3. From the very outset, therefore, of His prayer, when “He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee,” on to what He said a little afterwards, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was,” He wished all His disciples to be understood, to whom He makes the Father known, and thereby glorifies Him. For after saying, “That Thy Son may glorify Thee,” He straightway showed how that was to be done, by adding, “As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him: and this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” For the Father cannot be glorified through any knowledge attained by men, unless He also be known by whom He is glorified, that is to say, by whom He is made known to the nations of the world. The glorification of the Father is not that which was displayed in connection with the apostles only, but that which is displayed in all men, of whom as His members Christ is the head. For the words cannot be understood as applied to the apostles only, “As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him;” but to all, assuredly, on whom, as believing on Him, eternal life is bestowed.

4. Accordingly, let us now see what He says about those disciples of His who were then listening to Him. “I have manifested,” He says, “Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me.” Did they not, then, know the name of God when they were Jews? And what of that which we read, “God is known in Judah; His name is great in Israel”?1717 Therefore, “I have 1716 Matt. xxviii. 20. 1717 Ps. lxxvi. 1. manifested Thy name unto these men whom Thou gavest me out of the world,” and who are now hearing my words: not that name of Thine whereby Thou art called God, but that whereby Thou art called my Father: a name that could not be manifested without the manifestation of the Son Himself. For this name of God, by which He is called, could not but be known in some way to the whole creation, and so to every nation, before they believed in Christ. For such is the energy of true Godhead, that it cannot be altogether and utterly hidden from any rational creature, so long as it makes use of its reason. For, with the exception of a few in whom nature has become outrageously depraved, the whole race of man acknowledges God as the maker of this world. In respect, therefore, of His being the maker of this world that is visible in heaven and earth around us, God was known unto all nations even before they were indoctrinated into the faith of Christ. But in this respect, that He was not, without grievous wrong being done to Himself, to be worshipped alongside of false gods, God was known in Judah alone. But in respect of His being the Father of this Christ, by whom He taketh away the sin of the world, this name of His, previously kept secret from all, He now made manifest to those whom the Father Himself had given Him out of the world. But how had He done so, if the hour were not yet come, of which He had formerly said that the hour would come, “when I shall no more speak unto you proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of my Father”?1718 Can it be supposed that the proverbs themselves contained such a plain anouncement? Why, then, is it said, “I will declare to you openly,” but just because that “in proverbs” is not “openly”? But when it is no longer concealed in proverbs, but uttered in plain words, then without a doubt it is spoken openly. How, then, had He manifested what He had not as yet openly declared? It must be understood, therefore, in this way, that the past tense is put for the future, like those other words, “All things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you:”1719 as something He had not yet done, but spoke of as if He had, because His doing of it He knew to be infallibly pre-determined.

5. But what are we to make of the words, “Whom Thou gavest me out of the world”? For it is said of them that they were not of the world. But this they attained to by regeneration, and not by generation. And what, also, of that which follows, “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me”? Was there a time when they belonged to the Father, and not to His onlybegotten Son; and had the Father once on a time anything apart from the Son? Surely not. Nevertheless, there was a time when God the Son had something, which that same Son as man possessed not; for He had not yet become man of an earthly mother, when He possessed all things in common with the Father. Wherefore in saying, “Thine they were,” there is thereby no self-disruption made by God the Son, apart from whom there was nothing ever 1718 Chap. xvi. 25. 1719 Chap. xv. 15. possessed by the Father; but it is His custom to attribute all the power He possesses to Him, of whom He Himself is, who has the power. For of whom He has it that He is, of Him He has it that He is able; and both together He always had, for He never had being without having ability. Accordingly, what ever the Father could [do], always side by side with Him could the Son; since He, who never had being without having ability, was never without the Father, as the Father never was without Him. And thus, as the Father is eternally omnipotent, so is the Son co-eternally omnipotent; and if all-powerful, certainly all-possessing. 1720 For such rather, if we would speak exactly, is the word by which we translate what is called by the Greeks παντοκράτωρ which our writers would not interpret by the term omnipotent, seeing that παντοκράτωρ is all-possessing, were it not that they felt it to be equivalent in meaning. What, then, could the eternal all-possessing ever have, that the co-eternal allpossessing had not likewise? In saying, therefore, “And Thou gavest them me,” He intimated that it was as man He had received this power to have them; seeing that He, who was always omnipotent, was not always man. Accordingly, while He seems rather to have attributed it to the Father, that He received them from Him, since all that is, is of Him, of whom He is; yet He also gave them to Himself, that is, Christ, God with the Father, gave men to the manhood of Christ, which had not its being with the Father. Finally, He who says in this place, “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me,” had already said in a previous passage to the same disciples, “I have chosen you out of the world.”1721 Here, then, let every carnal thought be crushed and annihilated. The Son says that the men were given Him by the Father out of the world, to whom He says elsewhere, “I have chosen you out of the world.” Those whom God the Son chose along with the Father out of the world, the very same Son as man received out of the world from the Father; for the Father had not given them to the Son had He not chosen them. And in this way, as the Son did not thereby set the Father aside, when He said, “I have chosen you out of the world,” seeing that they were simultaneously chosen by the Father also: as little did He thereby exclude Himself, when He said, “Thine they were,” for they were equally also the property of the Son. But now that same Son as man received those who belonged not to Himself, because He also as God received a servant-form which was not originally His own.

6. He proceeds to say, “And they have kept Thy word: now they have known that all things, whatsoever Thou hast given me, are of Thee;” that is, they have known that I am of Thee. For the Father gave all things at the very time when He begat Him who was to have all things. “For I have given unto them,” He says, “the words which Thou gavest me; and they have received them;” that is, they have understood and kept hold of them. For the word is received when it is perceived by the mind. “And they have known truly,” He adds, “that 1720 Omnitenens. 1721 Chap. xv. 19. I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send me.” In this last clause we must also supply “truly;” for when He said, “They have known truly,” He intended its explanation by adding, “and they have believed.” That, therefore, “they have believed truly” which “they have known truly;” just as “I came out from Thee” is the same as “Thou didst send me.” When, therefore, He said, “They have known truly,” lest any might suppose that such a knowledge was already acquired by sight, and not by faith, He subjoined the explanation, “And they have believed,” so that we should supply “truly,” and understand the saying, “They have known truly,” as equivalent to “They have believed truly:” not in the way which He intimated shortly before, when He said, “Do ye now believe? The hour cometh, and is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone.” 1722 But “they have believed truly,” that is, in the way it ought to be believed, without constraint, with firmness, constancy, and fortitude: no longer now to go to their own, and leave Christ alone. As yet, indeed, the disciples were not of the character He here describes in words of the past tense, as if they were so already, but as thereby declaring beforehand what sort they were yet to be, namely, when they had received the Holy Spirit, who, according to the promise, should teach them all things. For how was it, before they received the Spirit, that they kept that word of His which He spake regarding them, as if they had done so, when the chief of them thrice denied Him,1723 after hearing from His lips the future fate of the man who denied Him before men?1724 He had given them, therefore, as He said, the words which the Father gave Him; but when at length they received them spiritually, not in an outward way with their ears, but inwardly in their hearts, then they truly received them, for then they truly knew them; and they truly knew them, because they truly believed.

7. But what human language will suffice to explain how the Father gave those words to the Son? The question, of course, will appear easier if we suppose Him to have received such words in His capacity as the Son of man. And yet, although thus born of the Virgin, who will undertake to relate when and how it was that He learned them, since even that very generation which He had of the Virgin who will venture to declare? But if our idea be that He received these words of the Father in His capacity as begotten of, and co-eternal with, the Father, let us then exclude all such thoughts of time as if He existed previous to His possessing them, and so received the possession of that which He had not before; for whatever God the Father gave to God the Son, He gave in the act of begetting. For the Father gave those things to the Son without which He could not be the Son, in the same manner as He gave Him being itself. For how otherwise would He give any words to the Word, wherein 1722 Chap. xvi. 31, 32. 1723 Matt. xxvi. 69–74. 1724 Matt. x. 33. in an ineffable way He hath spoken all things? But now, in reference to what follows, you must defer your expectations till another discourse.

1. When the Lord was speaking to the Father of those whom He already had as disciples, He said this also among other things: “I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given me.” By the world, He now wishes to be understood those who live according to the lust of the word, and stand not in the gracious lot of such as were to be chosen by Him out of the world. Accordingly it is not for the world, but for those whom the Father hath given Him, that He expresses Himself as praying: for by the very fact of their having already been given Him by the Father, they have ceased to belong to that world for which He refrains from praying.

2. And then He adds, “For they are Thine.” For the Father did not lose those whom He gave, in the act of giving them to the Son; since the Son still goes on to say, “And all mine are Thine, and Thine are mine.” Where it is sufficiently apparent how it is that all that belongs to the Father belongs also to the Son; in this way, namely, that He Himself is also God, and, of the Father born, is the Father’s equal: and not as was said to one of the two sons, to wit, the elder, “Thou art ever with me; and all that I have is thine.”1725 For that was said of all those creatures which are inferior to the holy rational creature, and are certainly subordinate to the Church; wherein its universal character is understood as including those two sons, the elder and the younger, along with all the holy angels, whose equals we shall be in the kingdom of Christ and of God:1726 but here it was said, “And all mine are Thine, and Thine are mine,” with this meaning, that even the rational creature is itself included, which is subject only to God, so that all beneath it are also subject to Him. As it then belongs to God the Father, it would not at the same time be the Son’s likewise, were He not equal to the Father: for to it He was referring when He said, “I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given me: for they are Thine, and all mine are Thine, and Thine are mine.” Nor is it morally admissible that the saints, of whom He so spake, should belong to any save to Him by whom they were created and sanctified: and for the same reason, everything also that is theirs must of necessity be His also to whom they themselves belong. Accordingly, since they belong both to the Father and to the Son, they demonstrate the equality of those to whom they equally belong. But when He says, speaking of the Holy Ghost, “All things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, that He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you,”1727 He referred to those things which concern the actual deity of the Father, and in which He is equal to Him, in having all that He has. And no more was it of the creature, 1725 Luke xv. 31. 1726 Luke xx. 36. 1727 Chap. xvi. 15. which is subject to the Father and the Son, that the Holy Spirit was to receive that whereof He said, “He shall receive of mine;” but most certainly of the Father, from whom the Spirit proceedeth, and of whom also the Son is born.

3. He proceeds: “And I am glorified in them.” He now speaks of His glorification as already accomplished, although it was still future; while a little before He was demanding of the Father its accomplishment. But whether this be the same glorification, whereof He had said, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was,” is certainly a point worthy of examination. For if “with Thee,” how can it be “in them”? Is it when this very knowledge is imparted to them, and, through them, to all who believe them as His witnesses? In such a way we may clearly understand Christ as having said of the apostles, that He was glorified in them; for in saying that it was already accomplished, He showed that it was already foreordained, and only wished what was future to be regarded as certain.

4. “And now,” He adds, “I am no more in the world, and these are in the world.” If your thoughts turn to the very hour in which He was speaking, both were still in the world; to wit, He Himself, and those of whom He was so speaking: for it is not in respect of the tendency of heart and life that we can or ought to understand it, so that they should be described as still in the world, on the ground that they still savored of the earthly; and that He was no longer in the world, because divine in the disposition of His mind. For there is one word used here, which makes any such understanding altogether inadmissible; because He does not say, And I am not in the world; but, “I am no more in the world:” thereby showing that He Himself had been in the world, but was no more so. And are we then at liberty to believe that He at one time savored of the worldly, and, delivered at length from such a mistake, no longer retained the old disposition? Who would venture to shut himself up in so profane a meaning. It remains, therefore, that in the same sense in which He Himself also was previously in the world, He declared that He was no longer in the world, that is to say, in His bodily presence; in other words, showing thereby that His own absence from the world was now in the immediate future, and theirs later, when He said that He was no longer here, and that they were so, although both He and they were still present. For He thus spake, as a man in harmony with men, in accordance with the prevailing custom of human speech. Do we not say every day, he is no longer here, of one who is on the very point of departure? And such in particular is the way we are wont to speak of those who are at the point of death. And besides all else, the Lord Himself, as if foreseeing the thoughts that might possibly be excited in those who were afterwards to read these words, added, “And I come to Thee:” explaining thereby in some measure why He said, “I am no more in the world.”

5. Accordingly He commends to the Father’s care those whom He was about to leave by His bodily absence, saying: “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given me.” That is to say, as man He prays to God in behalf of His disciples, whom He has received from God. But attend to what follows: “That they may be one,” He says, “even as we.” He does not say, That they may be one with us, or, that they and we may be one, as we are one; but He says, “That they may be one, even as we:” meaning, of course, that in their nature they may be one, even as we are one in ours, which certainly would not be spoken with truth, unless in this respect, that He, as God, is of the same nature as the Father also, in accordance with what He has said elsewhere, “I and the Father are one;”1728 and not with what He also is as man, for in this respect He said, “The Father is greater than I.”1729 But since one and the same person is God and man, we are to understand the manhood in respect of His asking; but the Godhead, in as far as He Himself, and He whom He asks, are one. But there is still a passage in what follows, where we must have a more careful discussion of this subject.

6. But here He proceeds: “While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name.” Since I am coming, He says, to Thee, keep them in Thy name, in which I myself have kept them while I was with them. In the Father’s name, the Son as man kept His disciples, when placed side by side with them in human presence; but the Father also, in the name of the Son, kept those whom He heard and answered when praying in the name of the Son. For to them had it also been said by the Son Himself: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you.”1730 But we are not to take this in any such carnal way, as that the Father and Son keep us in turn, with an alternation in the guardianship of both in guarding us, as if one succeeded when the other departed; for we are guarded all at once by the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, who is the one true and blessed God. But Scripture does not exalt us save by descending to us: as the Word, by becoming flesh, came down to lift us up, and fell not so as to remain Himself in the depths. If we have known Him who thus descendeth, let us rise with Him who lifteth us up; and let us understand, when He speaks thus, that He is marking a distinction in the persons, without making any separation of the natures. While, therefore, the Son in bodily presence was keeping His disciples, the Father was not waiting the Son’s departure in order to succeed to the guardianship, but both were keeping them by Their spiritual power; and when the Son withdrew from them His bodily presence, He retained along with the Father the spiritual guardianship. For when the Son also as man assumed the office of their guardian, He did not withdraw them from the Father’s guardianship; and when the Father gave them to the guardianship of the Son, in the very giving He acted not apart from Him to whom He gave them, but gave them to the Son as man, yet not apart from that same Son Himself as God.

1. While the Lord is still speaking to the Father, and praying for His disciples, He says: “I have given them Thy saying; and the world hath hated them.” That hatred they had not yet experienced in those sufferings of their own, which afterwards overtook them; but He speaks thus in His usual way, foretelling the future in words of the past tense. And then, subjoining the reason of their being hated by the world, He says, “Because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” This was conferred on them by regeneration; for by generation they were of the world, as He had already said to them, “I have chosen you out of the world.”1732 It was therefore a gracious privilege bestowed upon them, that they, like Himself, should not be of the world, through the deliverance which He was giving them from the world. He, however, was never of the world; for even in respect of His servantform He was born of that Holy Spirit of whom they were born again. For if on that account they were no more of the world, because born again of the Holy Spirit; on the same account He was never of the world, because born of the Holy Spirit.

2. “I pray not,” He adds, “that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” For they still accounted it necessary to be in the world, although they were no longer of it. Then He repeats the same statement: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth.” For so are they kept from the evil, as He had previously prayed that they might be. But it may be inquired how they were no more of the world, if they were not yet sanctified in the truth; or, if they already were, why He requests that they should be so. Is it not because even those who are sanctified still continue to make progress in the same sanctification, and grow in holiness; and do not so without the aid of God’s grace, but by His sanctifying of their progress, even as He sanctified their outset? And hence the apostle likewise says: “He who hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”1733 The heirs therefore of the New Testament are sanctified in that truth which was adumbrated in the purifications of the Old Testament; and when they are sanctified in the truth, they are in other words sanctified in Christ, who said in truth, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”1734 As also when He said, “The truth shall make you free,” in explanation of His words, He added soon after, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed;”1735 in order to show that what He had 1732 Chap. xv. 19. 1733 Phil. i. 6. 1734 Chap. xiv. 6. 1735 Chap. viii. 32–36. previously called the truth, He a minute afterwards denominates the Son. And what else did He mean by the words before us, “Sanctify them in the truth,” but, Sanctify them in me?

3. Finally, He proceeds, and doing so fails not to suggest the same with increasing clearness: “Thy speech (sermo) is truth.” What else did He mean than “I am the truth”? For the Greek Gospel has λόγος, which is also the word that is found in the passage where it is said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And that Word at least we know to be the only begotten Son of God, which “was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”1736 Hence also there might have been put here as it actually has been put in certain copies, “Thy Word is truth;” just as in some copies that other passage is written, “In the beginning was the speech.” But in the Greek without any variation it is λόγος in both cases. The Father therefore sanctifies in the truth, that is, in His own Word, in His Only begotten, His own heirs and His (the Son’s) co-heirs.

4. But now He still goes on to speak of the apostles, for He proceeds to add, “As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” Whom did He so send but His apostles? For even the very name of apostles, which is a Greek word, signifies in Latin nothing more than, those that are sent. God, therefore, sent His Son, not in sinful flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh;1737 and His Son sent those who, born themselves in sinful flesh, were sanctified by Him from the defilement of sin.

5. But since, on the ground that the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, has become Head of the Church, they are His members; therefore He says in the words that follow, “And for their sakes I sanctify myself.” For what means He by the words, “And for their sakes I sanctify myself,” but I sanctify them in myself, since they also are [part of] myself?1738 For those of whom He so speaks are, as I have said, His members; and the head and body are one Christ, as the apostle teaches when he says of the seed of Abraham, “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed,” after having said before, “He saith not, And to seeds, as in many, but as in one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.”1739 If, then, the seed of Abraham is Christ, what else is declared to those to whom he says, “Then are ye Abraham’s seed,” but then are ye Christ? Of the same character is what this very apostle said in another place: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh.”1740 He said not, of my afflictions, but “of Christ’s;” for he was a member of Christ, and in his persecutions, such as it behoved Christ to suffer in the whole of His body, he also was filling up his own share of His afflictions. And to be assured of the 1736 Chap. i. 1, 14. 1737 Rom. viii. 3. 1738 Cum et ipsi sint ego. 1739 Gal. iii. 29, 16. 1740 Col. i. 24. certainty of this in the present passage, give heed to what follows. For after saying, “And for their sakes I sanctify myself,” to let us understand that He thereby meant that He would sanctify them in Himself, He immediately added, “That they also may be sanctified in the truth.” And what else is this but in me, in accordance with the fact that the truth is that Word in the beginning which is God? In whom also the Son of man was Himself sanctified from the beginning of His creation, when the Word was made flesh, for the Word and the man became one person. Then accordingly He sanctified Himself in Himself, that is, Himself the man in Himself the Word; for the Word and the man is one Christ, who sanctifies the manhood in the Word. But in behalf of His members He says, “And for their sakes I,”—that is, that the benefit may be also theirs, for they too are included in the I, just as it benefited me in myself, because I am man apart from them—“I sanctify myself,” that is, I sanctify them as if it were my own self in me, since in me they also are I. “That they also may be sanctified in the truth.” For what else mean the words “they also,” but “they” in the same way as I; “in the truth,” and that “truth” am I? After this He now begins to speak not only of the apostles, but also of the rest of His members, which we shall treat of, as grace may be granted us, in another discourse.

1. The Lord Jesus, in the now close proximity of His passion, after praying for His disciples, whom He also named apostles, with whom He had partaken of that last supper from which His betrayer had taken his departure on being revealed by the sop of bread, and with whom, after the latter’s departure, and before beginning His prayer in their behalf, He had already spoken at length, conjoined all others also who were yet to believe on Him, and said to the Father, “Neither pray I for these alone,” that is, for the disciples who were with Him at the time, “but for them also,” He adds, “who shall believe on me through their word.” Whereby He wished all His own to be understood: not only such as were then in the flesh, but those also who were yet to come. For all that have since believed on Him have doubtless believed, and shall yet believe till He come, through the word of the apostles; for to themselves He had said, “And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning;” 1741 and by them was the gospel ministered even before it was written, and every one assuredly who believeth on Christ believeth the gospel. Accordingly, those who He says should believe on Him through their word, are not to be understood as referring only to such as heard the apostles themselves while they lived in the flesh; but others also after their decease, and we, too, born long afterwards, have believed on Christ through their word. For they that were then with Him preached to the others what they had heard from Him; and so their word, that we too might believe, has found its way to us, and wherever His Church exists, and shall yet reach down to posterity, whoever and wherever they be who shall hereafter believe on Him.

2. In this prayer, therefore, Jesus may seem to have omitted praying for some of His own, unless we carefully examine His words in the prayer itself. For if He prayed first for those, as we have already shown, who were then with Him, and afterwards for those also who should believe on Him through their word, it may be said that He prayed not for those who were neither with Him when He so spake, nor afterwards believed through their word, but had done so at some previous time either of themselves, or in some other supposable manner. For was Nathanael with Him at that time?1742 Was Joseph of Arimathea, who begged His body from Pilate, and of whom this same evangelist John testifies that he was already His disciple?1743 Were His mother, Mary, and other women who, we know from the Gospel, had been prior to that time His disciples? Were those with Him then, of whom 1741 Chap. xv. 27. 1742 The interrogative particle, numquid, beginning this and the following sentences, implies a negative answer. If Nathanael be identified with Bartholomew, the answer would be affirmative.—Tr. 1743 Chap. xix. 38. this evangelist John frequently says, “Many believed on Him”?1744 For whence came the multitude of those who, with branches of trees, partly preceded and partly followed Him as He sat on the ass, saying, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord;” and along with them the children of whom He Himself declared that the prophecy had been uttered, “Out of the mouth of babes and of sucklings Thou hast perfected praise”?1745 Whence the five hundred brethren, to all of whom at once He would not have appeared after His resurrection1746 had they not previously believed on Him? Whence that hundred and nine who, with the eleven, were a hundred and twenty, when, being assembled together after His ascension, they waited and received the promise of the Holy Spirit?1747 Whence came all these, save from those of Whom it was said, “Many believed on Him”? For them, therefore, the Saviour did not at this time pray, seeing it was for those He prayed who were then with Him, and for others not who had already, but who were yet to believe on Him through their word. But these were certainly not with Him on that occasion, and had already believed on Him at some previous period. I say nothing of the aged Simeon, who believed on Him when an infant; of Anna the prophetess;1748 of Zachariah and Elisabeth, who prophesied of Him before He was born of the Virgin;1749 of their son John, His forerunner, the friend of the Bridegroom, who both recognized Him in the Holy Spirit, and preached Him in His absence, and pointed Him out when He was present to the recognition of others;1750—I say nothing of these, as it might be replied that He ought not to have prayed for such when dead, who had gone hence with their great merits, and having met with a welcome reception were now at rest; for a similar answer is also given in connection with the righteous of olden time. For which of them could have been saved from the damnation awaiting the whole mass of perdition, which has been caused by one man, had he not believed, through the revelation of the Spirit, in the one Mediator between God and men as yet to come in the flesh? But behoved He to pray for the apostles, and not to pray for so many who were still alive, but were not then with Him, and had already at some previous period been brought to the faith? Who is there that would say so?

3. We are therefore to understand that their faith in Him was not yet such as He wished it to be, inasmuch as even Peter himself, to whom, on making the confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” He had borne so excellent a testimony, was disposed 1744 Chap. ii. 23, iv. 39, vii. 31, viii. 30, x. 42. 1745 Matt. xxi. 9; Ps. viii. 2. 1746 I Cor. xv. 6. 1747 Acts i. 15, and ii. 4. 1748 Luke ii. 25–38. 1749 Luke i. 41–45, 67–79. 1750 Chap. i. 19–36, and iii. 26–36. rather to hinder Him from dying than to believe in His resurrection when dead, and hence was called immediately thereafter by the same of Satan.1751 Those, accordingly, are found to be the greater in faith who were long since deceased, and yet, through the revelation of the Spirit, had no manner of doubt that Christ would rise again, than those who, after attaining to the belief that He should redeem Israel, at the sight of His death lost all the hope they previously possessed regarding Him. The best thing for us, therefore, to believe is, that after His resurrection, when the Holy Spirit was bestowed, and the apostles taught and confirmed, and from its outset constituted teachers in the Church, others, through their word, attained the proper faith in Christ, or, in other words, that they then got firm hold of the faith of His resurrection. And in this way also, that all those who seemed to have already believed on Him really belonged to the number of those for whom He prayed, when He said, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word.”

4. But we have still in reserve for the further solution of this question the blessed apostle, and that robber who was a villain in wickedness, but a believer on the cross. For the Apostle Paul tells us that he was made an apostle not of men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ: and speaking of his own gospel, he says, “For I neither received it of man, neither did I learn it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”1752 How then was he among those of whom it is said, “They shall believe on me through their word”? On the other hand, the robber believed at the very time when in the case of the teachers themselves such faith as they previously possessed had utterly failed. Not even he, therefore, believed on Christ through their word, and yet his faith was such that he confessed that He whom he saw nailed to the cross would not only rise again, but would also reign, when he said, “Remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.”1753

5. Accordingly it remains that if we are to believe that the Lord Jesus, in this prayer, prayed for all of His own who either then were or should thereafter be in this life, which is a state of trial upon earth,1754 we must so understand the expression, “through their word,” as to believe that it here signified the word of faith itself which they preached in the world, and that it was called their word because it was primarily and principally preached by them. For it was already in the course of being preached by them in the earth when Paul received that same word of theirs by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Whence also it came about that he compared the Gospel with them, lest by any means he had run, or should run, in vain; and they gave him their right hand because in him also they found, although not given him 1751 Matt. xvi. 16, 23. 1752 Gal. i. 1, 12. 1753 Luke xxiii. 42. 1754 Job vii. 1: Tentatio super terram, ץרֶאָ־לעַ אבָעָ ; English version, “An appointed time (marg., warfare) upon earth.” Rev. Ver. puts “warfare” into the text, and “time of service” on the margin. by them, their own word which they were already preaching, and in which they were now established.1755 And in regard to this word of the resurrection of Christ, it is said by the same apostle, “Whether it were I, or they, so we preach, and so ye believed;”1756 and again, “This is the word of faith,” he says, “which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is the Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”1757 And in the Acts of the Apostles we read that in Christ, God hath marked out [the ground of] faith unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.1758 Accordingly, this word of faith, because principally and primarily preached by the apostles who adhered to Him, was called their word. Not, however, on that account does it cease to be the word of God because it is called their word; for the same apostle says that the Thessalonians received it from him “not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God.”1759 “Of God,” for the very reason that it was freely given by God; but called “their word,” because primarily and principally committed to them by God to be preached. In the same way also the thief mentioned above had in the matter of his own faith their word, which was called theirs precisely because the preaching of it primarily and principally pertained to the office they filled. And once more, when murmuring arose among the Grecian widows in reference to the serving of the tables, previous to the time when Paul was brought to the faith of Christ, the reply given by the apostles, who before then had adhered to the Lord, was: “It is not good that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.”1760 Then it was that they provided for the ordination of deacons, that they themselves might not be drawn aside from the duty of preaching the word. Hence that was properly enough called their word which is the word of faith, whereby all, from whatever quarter they had heard it, believed on Christ, or, as yet to hear it, should thereafter believe. In this prayer, therefore, all whom He redeemed, whether then alive or thereafter to live in the flesh, were prayed for by our Redeemer when, praying for the apostles who were then with Him, He also conjoined those who were yet to believe on Him through their word. But what, after such conjunction, He then proceeds to say, must be reserved for discussion in another discourse.

1. After the Lord Jesus had prayed for His disciples whom He had with Him at the time, and had conjoined with them others who were also His own, by saying, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word,” as if we were inquiring what or wherefore He prayed for them, He straightway subjoined, “That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.” And a little above, while still praying for the disciples alone who were then with Him, He said, “Holy Father, keep in Thine own name those whom Thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are” (ver. 11). It is the same thing, therefore, that He now also prayed for in our behalf, as He did at that time in theirs, namely, that all—to wit, both we and they—may be one. And here we must take particular notice that the Lord did not say that we all may be one, but, “that they all may be one; as Thou Father, in me, and I in Thee” (where is to be understood are one, as is more clearly expressed afterwards); because He had also said before of the disciples who were with Him, “That they may be one, as we are.” The Father, therefore, is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, in such a way as to be one, because they are of one substance; but while we may indeed be in them, we cannot be one with them; for they and we are not of one substance, in as far as the Son is God along with the Father. But in as far as He is man, He is of the same substance as we are. But at present He wished rather to call attention to that other statement which He made use of in another place, “I and the Father are one,”1761 where He intimated that His own nature was the same with that of the Father. And accordingly, though the Father and Son, or even the Holy Spirit, are in us, we must not suppose that they are of one nature with ourselves. And hence they are in us, or we are in them, in this sense, that they are one in their own nature, and we are one in ours. For they are in us, as God in His temple; but we are in them, as the creature in its Creator.

2. But then after saying, “That they also may be one in us,” He added, “That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.” What does He mean by this? Is it that the world will then be brought to the faith, when we shall all be one in the Father and Son? Is not such a state the everlasting peace, and the reward of faith, rather than faith itself? For we shall be one not in order to our believing, but because we have believed. But although in this life, because of the common faith itself, all who believe in one are one according to the words of the apostle, “For ye are all one in Christ Jesus;”1762 even thus we are one, not in order to our believing, but because we do believe. What, then, is meant by the words, “That they all may be one, that the world may believe”? This, doubtless, that the “all” are themselves the 1761 Chap. x. 30. 1762 Gal. iii. 28. believing world. For those who shall be one are not of one class, and the world that is thereafter to believe on this very ground that these shall be one, of another; since it is perfectly certain that He says, “That they all may be one,” of those of whom He had said before, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on me through their word,” immediately adding as He does, “That they all may be one.” And this “all,” what is it but the world; not certainly that which is hostile, but that which is believing? For you see here that He who had said, “I pray not for the world,” now prayeth for the world that it may believe. For there is a world whereof it is written, “That we might not be condemned with this world.” 1763 For that world He prayeth not, for He is fully aware to what it is predestinated. And there is a world whereof it is written, “For the Son of man came not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved;”1764 and hence the apostle also says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.”1765 For this world it is that He prayeth, in saying, “That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.” For through this faith the world is reconciled unto God when it believes in the Christ whom God has sent. How, then, are we to understand Him when He says, “That they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me,” but just in this way, that He did not assign the cause of the world believing to the fact that those others are one, as if it believed on the ground that it saw them to be one; for the world itself here consisteth of all who by their own believing become one; but in His prayer He said, “That the world may believe,” just as in His prayer He also said, “That they all may be one;” and still further in the same prayer, “That they also may be one in us.” For the words, “they all may be one,” are equivalent to “the world may believe,” since it is by believing that they become one, perfectly one; that is, those who, although one by nature, had ceased to be so by their mutual dissensions. In fine, if the verb which He uses, “I pray,” be understood in the third clause, or rather, to make the whole fuller, be everywhere supplied, the explanation of this sentence will be all the clearer: I pray “that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, in me, and I in Thee;” I pray “that they also may be one in us;” I pray “that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.” And, mark, He added the words “in us” in order that we may know that our being made one in that love of unchanging faithfulness is to be attributed to the grace of God, and not to ourselves: just as the apostle, after saying, “For ye were at one time darkness, but now are ye light,” that none might attribute the doing of this to themselves, added, “in the Lord.”1766

3. Furthermore, our Saviour in thus praying to the Father showed Himself to be man; while He now also shows that He Himself, as being God along with the Father, doeth that 1763 1 Cor. xi. 32. 1764 Chap. iii. 17. 1765 2 Cor. v. 19. 1766 Eph. v. 8. which He prayeth for, when He says, “And the glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them.” And what was that glory but immortality, which human nature was henceforth to receive in Him? For not even He Himself had as yet received it, but in His own customary way, on account of the absolute fixedness of predestination, He intimates what is future in verbs of the past tense, because being now on the point of being glorified, or in other words, raised up again by the Father, He Himself is going to raise us up to the same glory in the end. What we have here is similar to what He says elsewhere, “As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.” And “whom,” but just the same as the Father? “For what things soever the Father doeth,” not other things, but “these also doeth the Son,” not in a different way, but “in like manner.”1767 And in this way He also raised up even His own self. For to this effect he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”1768 Accordingly the glory of immortality, which He says had been given Him by the Father, He must be also understood as having bestowed upon Himself, although He does not say it. For on this very account He more frequently says that the Father alone doeth, what He Himself also doeth along with the Father, that everything whatever He may attribute to Him of whom He is. But sometimes also He is silent about the Father, and says that He Himself doeth what He only doeth along with the Father: that we may thereby understand that the Son is not to be separated from the working of the Father, when He is silent about Himself, and ascribes some work or other to the Father; as, on the other hand, the Father is not separated from the working of the Son, when the Son is said, without any mention being made of [the Father] Himself, to be doing some work in which nevertheless both are equally engaged. When, therefore, in some work of the Father, the Son says nothing of His own working, He commends humility, that He may become the source of sounder health to us; but when, in turn, in the case of some work of His own, He says nothing of the working of the Father, He commends His own equality, that we may not suppose Him to be inferior. In this way, then, and in this passage, He neither estranges Himself from the Father’s working, although He has said, “The glory which Thou gavest me;” for He also gave it to Himself: nor does He estrange the Father from His own working, although saying, “I have given to them;” for the Father also gave it to them. For the works not only of the Father and the Son, but also of the Holy Spirit, are inseparable. But just as, because of His praying the Father in behalf of all His people, it was His own pleasure that this should be done, “that they all may be one;” so also on the ground of His own beneficence, as expressed in the words, “The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them,” the doing of that was none the less His pleasure; for He immediately added, “That they may be one, as we also are one.”

1. The Lord Jesus raises up His people to a great hope, than which there could not possibly be a greater. Listen and rejoice in hope, that, since the present is not a life to be loved, but to be tolerated, you may have the power of patient endurance amid all its tribulation.1777 Listen, I say, and weigh well to what it is that our hopes are exalted. Christ Jesus saith, The Son of God, the Only-begotten, who is co-eternal and equal with the Father, saith: He, who for our sakes became man, but became not, like every man besides, a liar,1778 saith: the Way, the Life, the Truth saith:1779 He who overcame the world, saith of those for whom He overcame it: listen, believe, hope, desire what He saith: “Father,” He says, “I will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am.” Who are these who He says were given Him by the Father? Are they not those of whom He says in another place, “No man cometh unto me, unless the Father, who hath sent me, draw him”?1780 We already know if we have made any beneficial progress in this Gospel, how it is that the things which He says the Father doeth, He Himself doeth likewise along with the Father. They are those, therefore, whom He has received from the Father, whom He Himself has also chosen out of the world, and chosen that they may be no more of the world, even as He also is not of the world; and yet that they also may be a world that believeth and knoweth that Christ has been sent by God the Father that the world might be delivered from the world, and so, as a world that was to be reconciled unto God, might not be condemned with the world that lieth in enmity. For so He says in the beginning of this prayer: “Thou hast given Him power over all flesh,” that is, over every man, “that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” Here He makes it clear that He has indeed received power over all men, that, as the future Judge of quick and dead, He may deliver whom He pleases, and condemn whom He pleases; but that these were given Him that to all of them He should give eternal life. For so He says: “That He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” Accordingly they were not given Him that from them He should withhold eternal life; although over them also the power has been given Him, inasmuch as He has received it over all flesh, in other words, over every man. In this way the world that has been reconciled will be delivered from the hostile world, when He putteth into exercise His power over it, to send it away into death eternal; but the other He maketh His own that He may give it everlasting life. Accordingly, to every one, without fail, of His own sheep the Good Shepherd, as to every one of His 1777 Rom. xii. 12. 1778 Ps. cxvi. 11. 1779 Chap. xiv. 6. 1780 Chap. vi. 44. members the great Head, hath promised this reward, that where He is, there also we shall be with Him; nor can that be otherwise which the omnipotent Son declared to be His will to the omnipotent Father. For there also is the Holy Spirit, equally eternal, equally God, the one Spirit of the two, the substance of the will of both. For the words that we read of Him as uttering on the eve of His passion, “Yet not, Father, as I will, but as Thou wilt,”1781 as if the Father has or had one will, and the Son another, are the echo of our infirmity, however faith-pervaded, which our Head transfigured in His own person, when He likewise bare our iniquities. But that the will of the Father and the Son is one, of both of whom also there is but one Spirit, by including whom we come to the knowledge of the Trinity, let piety believe, even though our infirmity meanwhile permitteth us not to understand.

2. But as we have already, in a way proportionate to the brevity of our discourse, spoken of the objects of the promise, and of its own stability; let us now look at this one point, as far as we are able, what it is that He was pleased to promise when He said, “I will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am.” As far as pertains to the creaturehood wherein He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, 1782 not even He Himself was yet where He would afterwards be: but He could say in this way, “where I am,” to let us understand that He was soon to ascend into heaven, so that He spake of Himself as being already there, where He was presently to be. He could do so also in the same way as He had said on a former occasion, when speaking to Nicodemus, “No man ascendeth into heaven, save He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven.” 1783 For there also He did not say, Will be, but “is,” because of the oneness of person, wherein God is at once man, and man God. He promised, therefore, that we should be in heaven; for thither the servant-form, which He received of the Virgin, has been elevated, and set at the right hand of the Father. Because of the same blessed hope the apostle also says: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ; by whose grace we are saved; and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”1784 And so accordingly we may understand the Lord to have said, “That where I am, there they may be also.” He, indeed, said of Himself that He was there already; but of us He merely declared that He wished us to be there with Him, without any indication that we were there already. But what the Lord said that He wished to be done, the apostle spake of as already accomplished. For he said not, He will yet raise us up, and make us sit in heavenly places; but, “hath raised us up, and made us sit in heavenly places:” for it is not without good grounds, but in believing 1781 Matt. xxvi. 39. 1782 Rom. i. 3. 1783 Chap. iii. 13. 1784 Eph. ii. 4–6. assurance, that he reckons as already done what he is certain will yet be done. But if it is in respect of the form of God, wherein He is equal to the Father, that we would be inclined to understand His words, “I will that they also be with me, where I am,” let our mind get quit of every thought of material images: whatever the soul has had presented to it, that is endowed with length, or breadth, or thickness, tinted by the light with any sort of bodily hue, or diffused through local space of any kind, whether finite or infinite, let it, as far as possible, turn away from all such notions the glance of its contemplation on the inward bent of its thoughts. And let us not be making inquiries as to where the Son, the Father’s co-equal, is, since no one has yet found out where He is not. But if any one would inquire, let him inquire rather how he may be with Him; not everywhere as He is, but wherever He may be. For when He said to the man that was expiating his crimes on the tree, and making confession unto salvation, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise,”1785 in respect to His human nature His own soul was on that very day to be in hell,1786 His flesh in the sepulchre; but as respected His Godhead He was certainly also in paradise. And therefore the soul of the thief, absolved from his by-gone crimes, and already in the blessed enjoyment of His grace, although it could not be everywhere as He was, yet could on that very day be also with Him in paradise, from which He, who is always everywhere, had not withdrawn. On this account, doubtless, it was not enough for Him to say, “I will that they also be where I am;” but He added, “with me.” For to be with Him is the chief good. For even the miserable can be where He is, since wheresoever any are, there is He also; but the blessed only are with Him, because it is only of Him that they can be blessed. Was it not truly said to God, “If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; and if I go down into hell, Thou art present?”1787 or is not Christ after all that Wisdom of God which “penetrateth everywhere because of its purity”?1788 But the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.1789 And similarly, to take a kind of illustration from what is visible, although greatly unlike, as the blind man, even though he be where the light is, is yet not himself with the light, but is really absent from that which is present; so the unbeliever and profane, or even the believer and pious, because not yet competent to gaze on the light of wisdom, although he cannot be anywhere that Christ is not there likewise, yet is not himself with Christ, I mean in actual sight. For we cannot doubt that the true believer is with Christ by faith; because in reference to this He saith, “He that is not with me is against me.”1790 But when He said to God the Father, “I 1785 Luke xxiii. 43. 1786 In inferno. 1787 Ps. cxxxix. 8. 1788 Wisd. vii. 24. 1789 Chap. i. 5. 1790 Matt. xii. 30. will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am,” He spake exclusively of that sight wherein we shall see Him as He is.1791

3. Let no one disturb the clearness of the meaning by any cloudy contradiction; but let what follows furnish its testimony to the words that precede. For after saying, “I will that they also be with me where I am,” He went on immediately to add, “That they may behold my glory, which Thou gavest me: for Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” “That they may behold,” He said; not, that they may believe. This is faith’s wages, 1792 not faith itself. For if faith has been correctly defined in the Epistle to the Hebrews as “the assurance conviction of things that are not seen,”1793 why may not the wages of faith be defined, the beholding of things which were hoped for in faith? For when we shall see the glory which the Father hath given the Son, even though we may understand what is spoken of in this passage, not as that glory which the Father gave His co-equal Son in begetting Him, but as that which He gave Him, when become the Son of man, after the death of the cross;—when, I say, we shall see that glory of the Son, then of a certainty shall take place the judgment of the quick and the dead, and then shall the wicked be taken away that he may not behold the glory of the Lord;1794 and what glory, save that of His Godhead? For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God:1795 and because the wicked are not pure in heart, therefore they shall not see. Then shall they go away into everlasting punishment; for so shall the wicked be taken away, that he may not behold the glory of the Lord: but the righteous shall go into life eternal.1796 And what is life eternal? “That they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (ver. 3): not, indeed, as those knew Him, who although impure in heart, yet were able to see Him as He sat in judgment in His glorified servant-form; but as He is yet to be known by the pure in heart, as the only true God, the Son along with the Father and Holy Spirit, because the Trinity itself is the only true God. If, then, it is in reference to His Godhead as the Son of God, equal and co-eternal with the Father, that we take the words, “I will that they also be with me where I am,” we shall be with Christ in the Father; but He in His own way, we in ours, wherever we may be in body. For if localities are to be understood, and such as contain incorporeal beings, and everything has a place where it is, the eternal place of Christ where He always is, is the Father Himself, and the place of the Father is the Son; for “I,” He said, “am in the Father, and the Father in me;”1797 and in this prayer, “As Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee:” and they are our 1791 1 John iii. 2. 1792 Merces. 1793 Heb. xi. 1. 1794 Isa. xxvi. 10. 1795 Matt. v. 8. 1796 Matt. xxv. 46. 1797 Chap. xiv. 10. place, because there follows, “That they also may be one in us:” and we are God’s place, inasmuch as we are His temple; even as He, who died for us and liveth for us, also prayeth for us, that we may be one in them; because “His dwelling place was made in peace,1798 and His habitation in Zion,”1799 which we are. But who is qualified to think on such places or what is in them, apart from the idea of space-defined capacities and material masses? Yet no little progress is made, if at least, when any such idea presents itself to the eye of the mind, it is denied, rejected, and reprobated: and a certain kind of light is, as far as possible, thought of, in which such things are perceived as deserving only to be denied, rejected, and reprobated; and the certainty of that light is known and loved, so that from thence an upward movement is begun in us, and an effort made to reach into places farther within: and when the mind through its own infirmity and still inferior purity has failed to penetrate them it is driven back again, not without the sighings of love and the tears of ardent longing, and continues to bear in patience until it is purified by faith, and prepared by the holiness of the inward life to be able to take up its abode therein.

4. How, then, shall we not be with Christ where He is, when we shall be with Him in the Father in whom He is? On this, also, the apostle is not without something to say to us, although we are not yet in possession of the reality, but only cherishing the hope. For he says, “If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God: set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye have died,” he adds, “and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Here, you see, our life is meanwhile in faith and hope with Christ, where He is; because it is with Christ in God. That, you see, is as if already accomplished for which He prayed, when He said, “I will that they also be with me where I am;” but now only by faith. And when will it be accomplished by actual sight? “When Christ,” he says, “who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” 1800 Then shall we appear as that which we then shall be; for it shall then be apparent that it was not without good grounds that we believed and hoped we should become so, before it actually took place. He will do this, to whom the Son, after saying, “That they may behold my glory, which Thou gavest me,” immediately added, “For Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” For in Him He loved us also before the foundation of the world, and then foreordained what He was to do in the end of the world.

5. “O righteous Father,” He saith, “the world hath not known Thee.” Just because Thou art righteous it hath not known Thee. It is as that world which has been predestined to condemnation really deserved, that it hath not known Him; while the world which He hath 1798 Ps. lxxvi. 2: in pace, םל”שָבְ ; rather as in English version, “in Salem” (Jerusalem).—Tr. 1799 Ps. lxxvi. 2: in pace, םל”שָבְ ; rather as in English version, “in Salem” (Jerusalem).—Tr. 1800 Col. iii. 1–4. reconciled unto Himself through Christ hath known Him not of merit, but by grace. For what else is the knowing of Him, but eternal life which, while He undoubtedly withheld it from the condemned world, He bestowed on the reconciled. On that very account, therefore, the world hath not known Thee, because Thou art righteous, and hast rendered unto it according to its deserts, that it should not know Thee: while on the same account the reconciled world hath known Thee, because Thou art merciful, and, not for any merit of its own, but by grace, hast supplied it with the needed help to know Thee. And then there follows, “But I have known Thee.” He is the Fountain of grace, who is by nature God, and, by grace ineffable, man also of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin: and then on His own behalf, because the grace of God is through Jesus Christ our Lord, He adds, “And these have known that Thou hast sent me.” Such is the reconciled world. But it is because Thou hast sent me that they have known: by grace, therefore, have they known.

6. “And I have made known to them,” He says, “Thy name, and will make it known.” I have made it known by faith, I will make it known by sight: I have made it known to those whose present sojourn in a strange land has its appointed end, I will make it known to those whose reign as kings shall be endless. “That the love,” He adds, “wherewith literally, which Thou hast loved me,1801 may be in them, and I in them. (The form of speech is unusual, “the love, which Thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them;” for the common way of speaking is, the love wherewith thou hast loved me. Here, of course, it is a translation from the Greek: but there are similar forms also in Latin; as we say, He served a faithful service, He served as a soldier a strenuous soldier-service; when apparently we ought to have said, He served with a faithful service, he served as a soldier with a strenuous soldierservice. But such as the form of expression is, “the love which Thou hast loved me;” one similar to it is also used by the apostle, “I have fought a good fight;”1802 he does not say, in a good fight, which would be the more usual and perhaps correcter form of expression.) But how else is the love wherewith the Father loved the Son in us also, but because we are His members and are loved in Him, since He is loved in the totality of His person, as both Head and members? Therefore He added, “and I in them;” as if saying, Since I am also in them. For in one sense He is in us as in His temple; but in another, because we are also Himself, seeing that, in accordance with His becoming man, that He might be our Head, we are His body. The Saviour’s prayer is finished, His passion begins; let us, therefore, also finish the present discourse, that we may treat of His passion, as He granteth us grace, in others to follow.

1. When the grand and lengthened discourse was concluded which the Lord delivered after supper, and on the eve of shedding His blood for us, to the disciples who were then with Him, and had added the prayer addressed to His Father, the evangelist John began thereafter the narrative of His passion in these words: “When Jesus had so spoken, He went forth with His disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which He entered, and His disciples. And Judas also, who betrayed Him, knew the place; for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with His disciples.” What he here relates of the Lord entering the garden with His disciples did not take place immediately after He had brought the prayer to a close, of which he says, “When Jesus had spoken these words:” but certain other incidents were interposed, which are passed over by the present evangelist and found in the others; just as in this one are found many things on which the others are similarly silent in their own narratives. But any one who desires to know how they all agree together, and the truth which is advanced by one is never contradicted by another, may seek for what he wants, not in these present discourses, but in other elaborate treatises;1803 but he will master the subject not by standing and listening, but rather by sitting down and reading, or by giving his closest attention and thought to one who does so. Yet let him believe before he know, whether he be able also to come to such a knowledge in this life, or find it impossible through some existing entanglements, that there is nothing written by any one evangelist, as far as regards those who have been received by the Church into canonical authority, that can be contrary to his own or another’s equally veracious narrative. At present, therefore, let us look at the narrative of the blessed John, which we have undertaken to expound, without any comparison with the others, and without lingering over anything in it that is already sufficiently clear; so that where it is needful to do so, we may the better answer the demand. Let us, therefore, not take His words, “When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which He entered, and His disciples,” as if it were immediately after the utterance of these words that He entered the garden; but let the clause, “When Jesus had spoken these words,” bear this meaning, that we are not to suppose Him entering the garden before He had brought these words to a close.

2. “Judas also,” he says, “who betrayed Him, knew the place;1804 for Jesus oft-times resorted thither with His disciples.” There, accordingly, the wolf, clad in a sheep’s skin, and 1803 Augustin refers to his books “On the Harmony of the Evangelists.” 1804 The text runs thus: Sciebat, inquit, et Judas, qui tradebat eum, locum. Ordo verborum est, Sciebat locum, qui tradebat eum; which could not be intelligibly translated into English.—Tr. tolerated among the sheep by the profound counsel of the Father of the family, learned where he might opportunely scatter the slender flock, and lay his coveted snares for the Shepherd. “Judas then,” he adds, “having received a cohort, and officers from the chief men and the Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns, and torches, and weapons.” It was a cohort, not of Jews, but of soldiers. We are therefore to understand it as having been received from the governor, as if for the purpose of securing the person of a criminal, and by preserving the forms of legal power, to deter any from venturing to resist his captors: although at the same time so great a band had been assembled, and came armed in such a way as either to terrify or even attack any one who should dare to make a stand in Christ’s defense. For only in so far was His power concealed and prominence given to His weakness, that these very measures were deemed necessary by His enemies to be taken against Him, for whose hurt nothing would have sufficed but what was pleasing to Himself; in His own goodness making a good use of the wicked, and doing what was good in regard to the wicked, that He might transform the evil into the good, and distinguish between the good and the evil.

3. “Jesus, therefore,” as the evangelist proceeds to say, “knowing all things that should come upon Him, went forth and saith unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, who betrayed Him, stood with them. As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground.” Where now were the military cohort, and the servants of the chief men and the Pharisees? where the terror and protection of weapons? His own single voice uttering the words, “I am He,” without any weapon, smote, repelled, prostrated that great crowd, with all the ferocity of their hatred and terror of their arms. For God lay hid in that human flesh; and eternal day was so obscured in those human limbs, that with lanterns and torches He was sought for to be slain by the darkness. “I am He,” He says; and He casteth the wicked to the ground. What will He do when He cometh as judge, who did this when giving Himself up to be judged? What will be His power when He cometh to reign, who had this power when He came to die? And now everywhere through the gospel Christ is still saying, “I am He;” and the Jews are looking for antichrist, that they may go backward and fall to the ground, as those who have abandoned what is heavenly, and are hankering after the earthly. It was for the very purpose of apprehending Jesus that His persecutors accompanied the traitor: they found the One they were seeking, for they heard, “I am He.” Why, then, did they not seize Him, but went backward and fell, but just because so He pleased, who could do whatever He pleased? But had He never permitted them to apprehend Him, they would certainly not have done what they came to do, but no more would He be doing what He came to do. They, verily, in their mad rage, sought for Him to put Him to death; but He, too, in giving Himself to death, was seeking for us. Accordingly, having thus shown His power to those who had the will, but not the power, to hold Him; let them now hold Him that He may work His own will with those who know it not.

1. After that His persecutors had, through the treason of Judas, taken and bound the Lord, who loved us, and gave Himself for us,1813 and whom the Father spared not, but gave Him up for us all:1814 that we may understand that there was no praise due to Judas for the usefulness of his treachery, but damnation for the willfulness of his wickedness: “They led Him,” as John the evangelist tells us, “to Annas first.” Nor does he withhold the reason for so doing: “For he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, who was the high priest that same year. Now Caiaphas was he,” he says, “who gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.” And properly enough Matthew, when wishing to say the same in fewer words, tells us that He was led to Caiaphas;1815 for He was also taken in the first place to Annas, simply because he was his father-in-law; and where we have only to understand that such was the very thing that Caiaphas wished to be done.

2. “But Jesus was followed,” he says, “by Simon Peter, and another disciple.” Who that other disciple is, we cannot affirm with confidence, because it is left unnoticed here. But it is in this way that John usually refers to himself, with the addition, “whom Jesus loved.”1816 Perhaps, therefore, it is he also in the present case; but whoever it is, let us look at what follows. “And that disciple,” he says, “was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest; but Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other disciple, who was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art thou also one of this man’s disciples? He saith, I am not.” Lo, the pillar of greatest strength has at a single breath of air trembled to its foundations. Where is now all that boldness of the promiser, and his overweening confidence in himself beforehand? What now of those words, when he said, “Why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake.”1817 Is this the way to follow the Master, to deny his own discipleship? is it thus that one’s life is laid down for the Lord, when one is frightened at a maid-servant’s voice, lest it should compel us to the sacrifice? But what wonder, if God foretold what was true, and man presumptuously imagined what was false? Assuredly in this denial of the Apostle Peter, which had now entered on its first stage, we ought to take notice that not only is Christ denied by one who says that He is not Christ, but by him also who, while really a Christian, himself 1813 Eph. v. 2. 1814 Rom. viii. 32. 1815 Matt. xxvi. 57. 1816 Chap. xiii. 23, and xix. 26. 1817 Chap. xiii. 37. denies that he is so. For the Lord said not to Peter, Thou shalt deny that thou art my disciple; but, “Thou shalt deny me.”1818 Him, therefore, he denied, when he denied that he was His disciple. And what else did such a form of denial imply, but that of his own Christianity? For although the disciples of Christ were not yet called by such a name,—because it was after His ascension, in Antioch, first that the disciples began to be called Christians,1819—yet the thing itself, that afterwards assumed such a name, already existed, those who were afterwards called Christians were already disciples; and this common name, like the common faith, they transmitted to their posterity. He, therefore, who denied that he was Christ’s disciple, denied the reality of the thing, of which the being called a Christian was only the name. How many afterwards, not to speak of old men and women, whose satiated feelings as regards the present life might more easily enable them to brave death for the confession of Christ; and not merely the youth of both sexes, when of an age at which the exercise of fortitude seems to be fairly required; but even boys and girls could do—even as an innumerable company of holy martyrs with brave hearts and by a violent death entered the kingdom of heaven—what at that moment he was unable to do, who received the keys of that kingdom. 1820 It is here we see why it was said, “Let these go their way,” when He, who hath redeemed us by His own blood, gave Himself for us; that the saying which He spake might be fulfilled, “Of those whom Thou hast given me I have lost none.” For assuredly, had Peter gone hence after denying the Christ, what else would have awaited him but destruction?

3. “And the servants and officers stood beside the fire of burning coals, for it was cold, and warmed themselves.” Though it was not winter, it was cold: which is sometimes wont to be the case even at the vernal equinox. “And Peter was standing with them, and warming himself. The high priest then asked Jesus of His disciples, and of His doctrine. Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I always taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither all the Jews resort, and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? ask those who heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.” A question occurs that ought not to be passed over, how it is that the Lord Jesus said, “I spake openly to the world;” and in particular that which He afterwards added, “In secret have I said nothing.” Did He not, even in that latest discourse which He delivered to the disciples after supper, say to them, “These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs; but the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of my Father?”1821 If, then, He spake not openly even to the more intimate company of His disciples, but gave the promise of a time when He would speak openly, how was it that He spake openly to the 1818 Matt. xxvi. 34. 1819 Acts xi. 26. 1820 Matt. xvi. 19. 1821 Chap. xvi. 25. world? And still further, as is also testified on the authority of the other evangelists, to those who were truly His own, in comparison with others who were not His disciples, He certainly spake with much greater plainness when He was alone with them at a distance from the multitudes; for then He unfolded to them the parables, which He had uttered in obscure terms to others. What then is the meaning of the words, “In secret have I said nothing”? It is in this way we are to understand His saying, “I spake openly to the world;” as if He had said, There were many that heard me. And that word “openly” was in a certain sense openly and in another sense not openly. It was openly, because many heard Him; and again it was not openly, because they did not understand Him. And even what He spake to His disciples apart, He certainly spake not in secret. For who speaketh in secret, that speaketh before so many persons; as it is written, “At the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established:”1822 especially if that be spoken to a few which he wisheth to become known to many through them; as the Lord Himself said to the few whom He had as yet, “What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops”?1823 And accordingly the very thing that seemed to be spoken by Himself in secret, was in a certain sense not spoken in secret; for it was not so spoken to remain unuttered by those to whom it was spoken; but rather so in order to be preached in every possible direction. A thing therefore may be uttered at once openly, and not openly; or at the same time in secret, and yet not in secret, as it is said, “That seeing, they may see, and not see.”1824 For how “may they see,” save only because it is openly, and not in secret; and again, how is it that the same parties “may not see,” save that it is not openly, but in secret? Howbeit the very things which they had heard without understanding, were such as could not with justice or truth be turned into a criminal charge against Him: and as often as they tried by their questions to find something whereof to accuse Him, He gave them such replies as utterly discomfited all their plots, and left no ground for the calumnies they devised. Therefore He said, “Why askest thou me? ask those who heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.”

4. “And when He had thus spoken, one of the officers who stood by gave Jesus a blow with his open hand, saying, Answerest thou the high priest so? Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?” What could be truer, meeker, juster, than such an answer? For it is His reply, from whom the prophetic voice had issued before, “Make for thy goal (literally, take aim), and advance prosperously and 1822 Deut. xix. 15. 1823 Matt. x. 27. 1824 Mark. iv. 12. reign, because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness.”1825 If we con sider who it was that received the blow, might we not well feel the wish that he who struck it were either consumed by fire from heaven, or swallowed up by the gaping earth, or seized and carried off by devils, or visited with some other or still heavier punishment of this kind? For what one of all these could not He, who made the world, have commanded by His power, had He not wished rather to teach us the patience that overcometh the world? Some one will say here, Why did He not do what He Himself commanded?1826 for to one that smote Him, He ought not to have answered thus, but to have turned to him the other cheek. Nay, more than this, did He not answer truthfully, and meekly, and righteously, and at the same time not only prepare His other cheek to him who was yet again to smite it, but His whole body to be nailed to the tree? And hereby He rather showed, what needed to be shown, namely, that those great precepts of His are to be fulfilled not by bodily ostentation, but by the preparation of the heart. For it is possible that even an angry man may visibly hold out his other cheek. How much better, then, is it for one who is inwardly pacified to make a truthful answer, and with tranquil mind hold himself ready for the endurance of heavier sufferings to come? Happy is he who, in all that he suffers unjustly for righteousness’ sake, can say with truth, “My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready;” for this it is that gives cause for that which follows: “I will sing and I give praise;”1827 which Paul and Barnabas1828 could do even in the cruellest of bonds.

5. But let us return to what follows in the Gospel narrative. “And Annas sent Him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest.” To him, according to Matthew’s account, He was led at the outset, because he was the high priest that year. For both the pontiffs are to be understood as in the habit of acting year by year alternately, that is, as chief priests; and these were at that time Annas and Caiaphas, as recorded by the evangelist Luke, when telling of the time when John, the Lord’s forerunner, began to preach the kingdom of heaven and to gather disciples. For he speaks thus: “Under the high priests Annas and Caiaphas, the word of the Lord came upon John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness,”1829 etc. Accordingly these 1825 Ps. xlv. 4. In the Hebrew text, at the close of verse 4 and beginning of verse 5 (Eng. Ver. verses 3 and 4), there is a repetition of the word והדרך , which in both cases is rendered in our English Version, “and [in] Thy majesty.” By the Septuagint, however, and the Vulgate, and here by Augustin, the latter of the two has been differently read as a verb, as if pointed וְהַדְרֵךְ , in the sense of “Bend thy bow,” “Take aim,” with the acc. omitted. Our English Version combines the next two verbs צְלַח רְכַב , “ride prosperously” while in the above the distinction is preserved, “advance prosperously, ride (as a king, reign).”—Tr. 1826 Matt. v. 39. 1827 Ps. lvii. 7. 1828 Here probably we should read Silas, according to Acts xvi. 25.—Migne. 1829 Luke iii. 2. two pontiffs fulfilled their years in turn: and it was the year of Caiaphas when Christ suffered. And so, according to Matthew, when He was apprehended, He was taken to him; but first, according to John, they came with Him to Annas; not because he was his colleague, but his father-in-law. And we must suppose that it was by Caiaphas’ wish that it was so done; or that their houses were so situated, that Annas could not properly be overlooked by them as they passed on their way.

6. But the evangelist, after saying that Annas sent Him bound unto Caiaphas, returns to the place of his narrative, where he had left Peter, in order to explain what had taken place in Annas’ house in regard to his threefold denial. “But Peter was standing,” he says, “and warming himself.” He thus repeats what he had already stated before; and then adds what follows. “They said therefore unto him, Art thou also one of his disciples? He denied, and said, I am not.” He had already denied once; this is the second time. And then, that the third denial might also be fulfilled, “one of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? Peter then denied again, and immediately the cock crew.” Behold, the prediction of the Physician is fulfilled, the presumption of the sick man is brought to the light. For there is no performance of what the latter had asserted, “I will lay down my life for Thy sake;” but a performance of what the former had predicted, “Thou shalt thrice deny me.”1830 But with the completion of Peter’s threefold denial, let the present discourse be also now completed, that hereafter we may make a fresh start with the consideration of what was done respecting the Lord before Pontius Pilate the governor.

1. Let us now consider, so far as indicated by the evangelist John, what was done with, or in regard to, our Lord Jesus Christ, when brought before Pontius Pilate the governor. For he returns to the place of his narrative where he had left it, to explain the denial of Peter. He had already, you know, said, “And Annas sent Him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest:” and having returned from where he had dismissed Peter as he was warming himself at the fire in the hall, after completing the whole of his denial, which was thrice repeated, he says, “Then they bring Jesus unto Caiaphas1831 into the hall of judgment (pretorium);” for he had said that He was sent to Caiaphas by his colleague and father-in-law Annas. But if to Caiaphas, why into the hall of judgment? Nothing else is thereby meant to be understood than the place where Pilate the governor dwelt. And therefore, either for some urgent reason Caiaphas had proceeded from the house of Annas, where both had met to give Jesus a hearing, to the governor’s pretorium, and had left the hearing of Jesus to his father-in-law; or Pilate had made his pretorium in the house of Caiaphas, which was so large as to contain separate apartments for its own master, and the like for the judge.

2. “And it was morning; and they themselves,” that is, those who brought Jesus, “went not into the judgment hall,” to wit, into that part of the house which Pilate occupied, supposing it to be Caiaphas’ house. And then in explanation of the reason why they went not into the judgment hall, he says, “lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.” For it was the commencement of the days of unleavened bread: on which they accounted it defilement to enter the abode of one of another nation. Impious blindness! Would they, forsooth, be defiled by a stranger’s abode, and not be defiled by their own wickedness? They were afraid of being defiled by the pretorium of a foreign judge, and had no fear of defilement from the blood of an innocent brother: not to say more than this meanwhile, which was enough to fix guilt on the conscience of the wicked. For the additional fact, that it was the Lord who was led to death by their impiety, and the giver of life that was on the way to be slain, may be charged, not to their conscience, but to their ignorance. 3. “Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.” Let the question be put to, and the answer come from, those who had been delivered from foul spirits, from the sickly who had been healed, the lepers who had been cleansed, the deaf who were hearing, the dumb who were speaking, the blind who were seeing, the dead who were raised to life, and, above all, the foolish who were become 1831 This reading of the text is also found in “The Harmony of the Evangelists,” Book iii. chap. 7; but the true biblical reading is now ascertained to be, ἀπὸ τοῦ Καἴάφα, “from Caiaphas.”—Migne. wise, whether Jesus were a malefactor. But these things were said by those of whom He Himself had already foretold by the prophet, “They rewarded me evil for good.”1832

4. “Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” What is this that their insane cruelty saith? Did not they put Him to death, whom they were here presenting for the very purpose? Or does the cross, forsooth, fail to kill? Such is the folly of those who do not pursue, but persecute wisdom. What then mean the words, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death”? If He is a malefactor, why is it not lawful? Did not the law command them not to spare malefactors, especially (as they accounted Him to be) those who seduced them from their God?1833 We are, however, to understand that they said that it was not lawful for them to put any man to death, on account of the sanctity of the festal day, which they had just begun to celebrate, and on account of which they were afraid of being defiled even by entering the pretorium. Had you become so hardened, false Israelites? Were you by your excessive malice so lost to all sense, as to imagine that you were unpolluted by the blood of the innocent, because you gave it up to be shed by another? Was even Pilate himself going to slay Him with his own hands, when made over by you into his power for the very purpose? If you did not wish Him to be slain; if you did not lay snares for Him; if you did not get Him to be betrayed to you for money; if you did not lay hands upon Him, and bind Him, and bring Him there; if you did not with your own hands present Him, and with your voices demand Him to be slain,—then boast that He was not put to death by you. But if in addition to all these former deeds of yours, you also cried out, “Crucify, crucify him;”1834 then hear what it is against you that the prophet proclaims: “The sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.”1835 These, look you, are the spears, the arrows, the sword, wherewith you slew the righteous, when you said that it was not lawful for you to put any man to death. Hence it is also that when for the purpose of apprehending Jesus the chief priests did not themselves come, but sent; yet the evangelist Luke says in the same passage of his narrative, “Then said Jesus unto those who were come to him, [namely] the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and elders, Be ye come out, 1832 Ps. xxxv. 12. 1833 Deut. xiii. 5. Augustin evidently attaches a wrong meaning to the words, Nobis non licet interficere quenquam; as if these Jews thereby insinuated that they did not themselves wish Christ’s death: unaware, seemingly, of the fact, that, on their subjugation by the Romans, their own rulers were still allowed to try minor offenses, but were deprived of the power of inflicting capital punishment; and that, consequently, it was because they were actually bent on putting Him to death, and no less penalty would satisfy them, that they thus brought Him before the Roman governor.—Tr. 1834 Chap. xix. 6. 1835 Ps. lvii. 4. as against a thief,” etc?1836 As therefore the chief priests went not in their own persons, but by those whom they had sent, to apprehend Jesus, what else was that but coming themselves in the authority of their own order and so all, who cried out with impious voices for the crucifixion of Christ, slew Him, not, indeed, directly with their own hands, but personally through him who was impelled to such a crime by their clamor.

5. But when the evangelist John adds, “That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which He spake, signifying what death He should die:” if we would understand such words as referring to the death of the cross, as if the Jews had said, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” for this reason that it was one thing to be put to death, and another to be crucified: I do not see how such can be understood as a consequence, seeing that this was their answer to the words that Pilate had just addressed to them, “Take ye him, and judge him according to your law.” If it were so, could they not then have taken Him, and crucified Him themselves, had they desired by any such form of punishment to avoid the putting of Him to death? But who is there that may not see the absurdity of allowing those to crucify any one, who were not allowed to put any one to death? Nay more, did not the Lord Himself call that same death of His, that is, the death of the cross, a putting to death, as we read in Mark, where he says, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles: and they shall mock Him, and shall spit upon Him, and shall scourge Him, and shall put Him to death, and the third day He shall rise again”?1837 There is no doubt, therefore, that in so speaking the Lord signified what death He should die: not that He here meant the death of the cross to be understood, but that the Jews were to deliver Him up to the Gentiles, or, in other words, to the Romans. For Pilate was a Roman, and had been sent by the Romans into Judea as governor. That, then, this saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, namely, that, being delivered up to them, He should be put to death by the Gentiles, as Jesus had foretold would happen; therefore when Pilate, who was the Roman judge, wished to hand Him back to the Jews, that they might judge Him according to their law, they refused to receive Him, saying, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” And so the saying of Jesus was fulfilled, which He foretold concerning His death, that, being delivered up by the Jews, He should be put to death by the Gentiles: whose crime was less than that of the Jews, who sought by this method to make themselves appear averse to His being put to death, to the end that, not their innocence, but their madness might be made manifest.

1. What Pilate said to Christ, or what He replied to Pilate, has to be considered and handled in the present discourse. For after the words had been addressed to the Jews, “Take ye him, and judge him according to your law,” and the Jews had replied, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death, Pilate entered again into the judgment hall, and called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus answered, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?” The Lord indeed knew both what He Himself asked, and what reply the other was to give; but yet He wished it to be spoken, not for the sake of information to Himself, but that what He wished us to know might be recorded in Scripture. “Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation, and the chief priests, have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.” This is what the good Master wished us to know; but first there had to be shown us the vain notion that men had regarding His kingdom, whether Gentiles or Jews, from whom Pilate had heard it; as if He ought to have been punished with death on the ground of aspiring to an unlawful kingdom; or as those in the possession of royal power usually manifest their ill-will to such as are yet to attain it, as if, for example, precautions were to be used lest His kingdom should prove adverse either to the Romans or to the Jews. But the Lord was able to reply to the first question of the governor, when he asked Him, “Art thou the King of the Jews?” with the words, “My kingdom is not of this world,” etc.; but by questioning him in turn, whether he said this thing of himself, or heard it from others, He wished by his answer to show that He had been charged with this as a crime before him by the Jews: laying open to us the thoughts of men, which were all known to Himself, that they are but vain;1838 and now, after Pilate’s answer, giving them, both Jews and Gentiles, all the more reasonable and fitting a reply, “My kingdom is not of this world.” But had He made an immediate answer to Pilate’s question, His reply would have appeared to refer to the Gentiles only, without including the Jews, as entertaining such an opinion regarding Him. But now when Pilate replied, “Am I a Jew? Thine own nation, and the chief priests, have delivered thee to me;” he removed from himself the suspicion of being possibly supposed to have spoken of his own accord, in saying that Jesus was the king of the Jews, by showing that such a statement had been communicated to him by the Jews. And then by saying, “What hast thou done?” he made it sufficiently clear that this was charged against Him as a crime: as if he had said, If thou deniest such kingly claims, what hast thou done to cause thy being delivered unto me? As 1838 Ps. xciv. 11. if there would be no ground for wonder that one should be delivered up to a judge for punishment, who proclaimed himself a king; but if no such assertion were made, it became needful to inquire of Him, what else, if anything, He had done, that He should thus deserve to be delivered unto the judge.

2. Hear then, ye Jews and Gentiles; hear, O circumcision; hear, O uncircumcision; hear, all ye kingdoms of the earth: I interfere not with your government in this world, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Cherish ye not the utterly vain terror that threw Herod the elder into consternation when the birth of Christ was announced, and led him to the murder of so many infants in the hope of including Christ in the fatal number,1839 made more cruel by his fear than by his anger: “My kingdom,” He said, “is not of this world.” What would you more? Come to the kingdom that is not of this world; come, believing, and fall not into the madness of anger through fear. He says, indeed, prophetically of God the Father, “Yet have I been appointed king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion;”1840 but that hill of Zion is not of this world. For what is His kingdom, save those who believe in Him, to whom He says, “Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world”? And yet He wished them to be in the world: on that very account saying of them to the Father, “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”1841 Hence also He says not here, “My kingdom is not” in this world; but, “is not of this world.” And when He proved this by saying, “If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews,” He saith not, “But now is my kingdom not” here, but, “is not from hence.” For His kingdom is here until the end of the world, having tares intermingled therewith until the harvest; for the harvest is the end of the world, when the reapers, that is to say, the angels, shall come and gather out of His kingdom everything that offendeth;1842 which certainly would not be done, were it not that His kingdom is here. But still it is not from hence; for it only sojourns as a stranger in the world: because He says to His kingdom, “Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.”1843 They were therefore of the world, so long as they were not His kingdom, but belonged to the prince of this world. Of the world therefore are all mankind, created indeed by the true God, but generated from Adam as a vitiated and condemned stock; and there are made into a kingdom no longer of the world, all from thence that have been regenerated in Christ. For so did God rescue us from the power of darkness, and translate us into the 1839 Matt. ii. 3, 16. 1840 Ps. ii. 6. 1841 Chap. xvii. 16, 15. 1842 Matt. xiii. 38–41. 1843 Chap. xv. 19. kingdom of the Son of His love: 1844 and of this kingdom it is that He saith, “My kingdom is not of this world;” or, “My kingdom is not from hence.”

3. “Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king.” Not that He was afraid to confess Himself a king, but “Thou sayest” has been so balanced that He neither denies Himself to be a king (for He is a king whose kingdom is not of this world), nor does He confess that He is such a king as to warrant the supposition that His kingdom is of this world. For as this was the very idea in Pilate’s mind when he said, “Art thou a king then?” so the answer he got was, “Thou sayest that I am a king.” For it was said, “Thou sayest,” as if it had been said, Carnal thyself, thou sayest it carnally.

4. Thereafter He adds, “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.”1845 Whence it is evident that He here referred to His own temporal nativity, when by becoming incarnate He came into the world, and not to that which had no beginning, whereby He was God through whom the Father created the world. For this, then, that is, on this account, He declared that He was born, and to this end He came into the world, to wit, by being born of the Virgin, that He might bear witness unto the truth. But because all men have not faith, 1846 He still further said, “Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” He heareth, that is to say, with the ears of the inward man, or, in other words, He obeyeth my voice, which is equivalent to saying, He believeth me. When Christ, therefore, beareth witness unto the truth, He beareth witness, of course, unto Himself; for from His own lips are the words, “I am the truth;”1847 as He said also in another place, “I bear witness of myself.”1848 But when He said, “Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice,” He commendeth the grace whereby He calleth according to His own purpose. Of which purpose the apostle says, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to the purpose of God,”1849 to wit, the 1844 Col. i. 13. 1845 The verse quoted reads in Latin, “Ego in hoc natus sum, et ad hoc veni,” etc.; and in reference to the words, in hoc, Augustin goes on to say, in the passage marked . “We are not to lengthen the syllable [vowel] of this pronoun when He says, In hoc natus sum, as if He meant to say, In this thing was I born; but to shorten it, as if He had said, Ad hanc rem natus sum, vel ad hoc natus sum (for this thing was I born), just as He says, Ad hoc veni in mundum (for this came I into the world). For in the Greek Gospel there is no ambiguity in this expression,” the Greek having εἰς τοῦτο. This passage is interesting only to Latin scholars, as showing that in ordinary parlance they marked, in Augustin’s time, the distinction between hoc of the abl. and hoc of the nom. or acc.—Tr. 1846 2 Thess. iii. 2. 1847 Chap. xiv. 6. 1848 Chap. viii. 18. 1849 Rom. viii. 28. purpose of Him that calleth, not of those who are called; which is put still more clearly in another place in this way, “Labor together in the gospel according to the power of God, who saveth us and calleth us with His holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace.”1850 For if our thoughts turn to the nature wherein we have been created, inasmuch as we were all created by the Truth, who is there that is not of the truth? But it is not all to whom it is given of the truth to hear, that is, to obey the truth, and to believe in the truth; while in no case certainly is there any preceding of merit, lest grace should cease to be grace. For had He said, Every one that heareth my voice is of the truth, then it would be supposed that he was declared to be of the truth because he conforms to the truth; it is not this, however, that He says, but, “Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” And in this way he is not of the truth simply because he heareth His voice; but only on this account he heareth, because he is of the truth, that is, because this is a gift be- stowed on him of the truth. And what else is this, but that by Christ’s gracious bestowal he believeth on Christ?

5. “Pilate said unto Him, What is truth?” Nor did he wait to hear the answer; but “when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and said unto them, I find in him no fault. But ye have a custom that I should release unto you one at the passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews?” I believe when Pilate said, “What is truth?” there immediately occurred to his mind the custom of the Jews, according to which he was wont to release unto them one at the passover; and therefore he did not wait to hear Jesus’ answer to his question, What is truth? to avoid delay on recollecting the custom whereby He might be released unto them during the passover—a thing which it is clear he greatly desired. It could not, however, be torn from his heart that Jesus was the King of the Jews, but was fixed there, as in the superscription, by the truth itself, whereof he had just inquired what it was. “But on hearing this, they all cried again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.” We blame you not, O Jews, for liberating the guilty during the passover, but for slaying the innocent; and yet unless that were done, the true passover would not take place. But a shadow of the truth was retained by the erring Jews, and by a marvellous dispensation of divine wisdom the truth of that same shadow was fulfilled by deluded men; because in order that the true passover might be kept, Christ was led as a sheep to the sacrificial slaughter. Hence there follows the account of the injurious treatment received by Christ at the hands of Pilate and his cohort; but this must be taken up in another discourse.

1. On the Jews crying out that they did not wish Jesus to be released unto them at the passover, but Barabbas the robber; not the Saviour, but the murderer; not the Giver of life, but the destroyer,—“then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him.” We must believe that Pilate acted thus for no other reason than that the Jews, glutted with the injuries done to Him, might consider themselves satisfied, and desist from madly pursuing Him even unto death. With a similar intention was it that, as governor, he also permitted his cohort to do what follows, or even perhaps ordered them, although the evangelist is silent on the subject. For he tells us what the soldiers did thereafter, but not that Pilate ordered it. “And the soldiers,” he says, “platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they clothed Him with a purple robe. And they came to Him and said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they smote Him with their hands.” Thus were fulfilled the very things which Christ had foretold of Himself; thus were the martyrs moulded for the endurance of all that their persecutors should be pleased to inflict; thus, by concealing for a time the terror of His power, He commended to us the prior imitation of His patience; thus the kingdom which was not of this world overcame that proud world, not by the ferocity of fighting, but by the humility of suffering; and thus the grain of corn that was yet to be multiplied was sown amid the horrors of shame, that it might come to fruition amid the wonders of glory.

2. “Pilate went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And he saith unto them, Behold the man!” Hence it is apparent that these things were done by the soldiers not without Pilate’s knowledge, whether it was that he ordered them or only permitted them, namely, for the reason we have stated above, that His enemies might all the more willingly drink in the sight of such derisive treatment, and cease to thirst further for His blood. Jesus goes forth to them wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, not resplendent in kingly power, but laden with reproach; and the words are addressed to them, Behold the man! If you hate your king, spare him now when you see him sunk so low; he has been scourged, crowned with thorns, clothed with the garments of derision, jeered at with the bitterest insults, struck with the open hand; his ignominy is at the boiling point, let your ill-will sink to zero. But there is no such cooling on the part of the latter, but rather a further increase of heat and vehemence.

3. “When the chief priests, therefore, and attendants saw Him, they cried out, saying, Crucify, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them Take ye him and crucify him; for I find no fault in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by the law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.” Behold another and still greater ground of hatred. The former, indeed, seemed but a small matter, as that shown towards the usurpation, by an unlawful act of daring, of the royal power; and yet of neither did Jesus falsely claim possession, but each of them is truly His as both the only-begotten Son of God, and by Him appointed King upon His holy hill of Zion; and both might He now have shown to be His, were it not that in proportion to the greatness of His power, He preferred to manifest the corresponding greatness of His patience.

4. “When Pilate, therefore, heard that saying, he was the more afraid; and entered again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.” It is found, in comparing the narratives of all the evangelists, that this silence on the part of our Lord Jesus Christ took place more than once, both before the chief priests and before Herod, to whom, as Luke intimates, Pilate had sent Him for a hearing, and before Pilate himself; 1851 so that it was not in vain that the prophecy regarding Him had preceded, “As the lamb before its shearer was dumb, so He opened not His mouth,”1852 especially on those occasions when He answered not His questioners. For although He frequently replied to questions addressed to Him, yet because of those in regard to which He declined making any reply, the metaphor of the lamb is supplied, in order that in His silence He might be accounted not as guilty, but innocent. When, therefore, He was passing through the process of judgment, wherever He opened not His mouth it was in the character of a lamb that He did so; that is, not as one with an evil conscience who was convicted of his sins, but as one who in His meekness was sacrificed for the sins of others.

5. “Then saith Pilate unto Him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered: Thou wouldest have no power against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.” Here, you see, He replied; and yet wherever He replied not, it is not as one who is criminal or cunning, but as a lamb; that is, in simplicity and innocence He opened not His mouth. Accordingly, where He made no answer, He was silent as a sheep; where He answered, He taught as the Shepherd. Let us therefore set ourselves to learn what He said, what He taught also by the apostle, that “there is no power but of God;”1853 and that he is a greater sinner who maliciously delivereth up to the power the innocent to be slain, than the power itself, if it slay him through fear of another power that is greater still. Of such a sort, indeed, was the power which God had given to Pilate, that he should also be under the power of Cæsar. Wherefore “thou wouldest have,” He says, “no power against me,” that is, even the little measure thou really hast, “except” this very measure, whatever its amount, “were given thee from above.” But knowing as I do its amount, for it is not so great as to render thee altogether independent, “therefore he that delivered me 1851 Matt. xxvi. 63, xxvii. 14; Mark xiv. 61, xv. 5; Luke xxiii. 7–9; John xix. 9. 1852 Isa. liii. 7. 1853 Rom. xiii. 1. unto thee hath the greater sin.” He, indeed, delivered me to thy power at the bidding of envy, whilst thou art to exercise thy power upon me through the impulse of fear. And yet not even through the impulse of fear ought one man to slay another, especially the innocent; nevertheless to do so by an officious zeal is a much greater evil than under the constraint of fear. And therefore the truth-speaking Teacher saith not, “He that delivered me to thee,” he only hath sin, as if the other had none; but He saith, “hath the greater sin,” letting him understand that he himself was not exempt from blame. For that of the latter is not reduced to nothing because the other is greater.

6. “Hence Pilate sought to release Him.” What is to be understood by the word here used, “hence,”1854 as if he had not been seeking to do so before? Read what precedes, and thou wilt find that he had already for some time been seeking to release Jesus. By the original word,1855 therefore, we are to understand, on this account, that is, for this reason, that he might not contract sin by slaying an innocent man who had been delivered into his hands, even though his sin would be less than that of the Jews, who delivered Him to him to be put to death. “From thence,”1856 therefore, that is, for this reason, that he might not commit such a sin, “he sought” not now for the first time, but from the beginning, “to release Him.”

7. “But the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Cæsar.” They thought to inspire Pilate with greater fear by terrifying him about Cæsar, in order that he might put Christ to death, than formerly when they said, “We have the law, and by the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.” It was not their law, indeed, that impelled him through fear to the deed of murder, but rather it was his fear of the Son of God that held him back from the crime. But now he could not set Cæsar, who was the author of his own power, at nought, in the same way as the law of another nation.

8. As yet, however, the evangelist proceeds to say: “But when Pilate heard these sayings, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down before the tribunal, in a place that is called the Pavement, 1857 but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation1858 of the passover, and about the sixth hour.” The question, at what hour the Lord was crucified, because of the testimony supplied by another evangelist, who says, “And it was the third hour, and they crucified Him,”1859 we shall consider as we can, if the Lord please, when we are come to the passage itself where His crucifixion is recorded.1860 When Pilate, therefore, had sat 1854 Exinde: Greek, ἐκτούτου; literally. “therefrom.”—Tr. 1855 Exinde: Greek, ἐκτούτου; literally. “therefrom.”—Tr. 1856 Exinde: Greek, ἐκτούτου; literally. “therefrom.”—Tr. 1857 Lithostrotos. 1858 Parasceve; Greek, παρασκευή. 1859 Mark xv. 25. 1860 See below, Tract. CXVII. secs. 1, 2. down before the tribunal, “he saith unto the Jews, Behold your king! But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said unto them, Shall I crucify your king?” As yet he tries to overcome the terror with which they had inspired him about Cæsar, by seeking to break them from their purpose on the ground of the ignominy it brought on themselves, with the words, “Shall I crucify your king?” when he failed to soften them on the ground of the ignominy done to Christ; but by and by he is overcome by fear.

9. For “the chief priests answered, We have no king but Cæsar. Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified.” For he would have every appearance of acting against Cæsar if, on their declaration that they had no king but Cæsar, he were wishing to impose on them another king by releasing without punishment one whom for these very attempts they had delivered unto him to be put to death. “Therefore he delivered Him unto them to be crucified.” But was it, then, anything different that he had previously desired when he said, “Take ye him, and crucify him;” or even earlier still, “Take ye him, and judge him according to your law?” And why did they show so great reluctance, when they said, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,”1861 and were in every way urgent to have Him slain not by themselves, but by the governor, and therefore refused to receive Him for the purpose of putting Him to death, if now for the same purpose they actually do receive Him? Or if such be not the case, why was it said, “Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified?” Or is it of any importance? Plainly it is. For it was not said, “Then delivered he Him therefore unto them” that they might crucify Him, but “that He might be crucified,” that is, that He might be crucified by the judicial sentence and power of the governor. But it is for this reason that the evangelist has said that He was delivered to them, that he might show that they were implicated in the crime from which they tried to hold themselves aloof; for Pilate would have done no such thing, save to implement what he perceived to be their fixed desire. The words, however, that follow, “And they took Jesus, and led Him away,” may now refer to the soldiers, the attendants of the governor. For it is more clearly stated afterwards, “When the soldiers therefore had crucified Him,”1862 although the evangelist properly does so even when he attributes the whole to the Jews, for they it was that received what they had with the utmost greediness demanded, and they it was that did all that they compelled to be done. But the events that follow must be made the subject of consideration in another discourse.

1. On Pilate’s judgment and condemnation before the tribunal, they took the Lord Jesus Christ, about the sixth hour, and led Him away. “And He, bearing His cross, went forth into the place that is called Calvary, but in Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him.” What else, then, is the meaning of the evangelist Mark saying, “And it was the third hour, and they crucified Him,”1863 but this, that the Lord was crucified at the third hour by the tongues of the Jews, at the sixth hour by the hands of the soldiers? That we may understand that the fifth hour was now completed, and there was some beginning made of the sixth, when Pilate took his seat before the tribunal, which is expressed by John as “about1864 the sixth hour;” and when He was led forth, and nailed to the tree with the two robbers, and the events recorded were enacted beside His cross, the completion of the sixth hour was fully reached, being the hour from which, on to the ninth, the sun was obscured, and the darkness took place, we have it jointly attested on the authority of the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.1865 But as the Jews attempted to transfer the crime of slaying Christ from themselves to the Romans, that is to say, to Pilate and his soldiers, therefore Mark suppresses the hour at which Christ was crucified by the soldiers, and which then began to enter upon the sixth, and remembers rather to give an express place to the third hour, at which they are understood to have cried out before Pilate, “Crucify, crucify him” (verse 6), that it not only may be seen that the former crucified Jesus, namely, the soldiers who hung Him on the tree at the sixth hour, but the Jews also, who at the third hour cried out to have Him crucified.

2. There is also another solution of this question, that we should not here understand the sixth hour of the day, because John says not, And it was about the sixth hour of the day, or about the sixth hour, but says, “And it was the parasceve of the passover, about the sixth hour” (ver. 14). And parasceve is in Latin præparatio (preparation); but the Jews are fonder of using the Greek words in observances of this sort, even those of them who speak Latin rather than Greek. It was therefore the preparation of the passover. But “our passover, Christ,” as the apostle says, “has been sacrificed;”1866 and if we reckon the preparation of this passover from the ninth hour of the night (for then the chief priests seem to have given their verdict for the sacrifice of the Lord, when they said, “He is guilty of death,”1867 and when the hearing of His case was still proceeding in the high priest’s house: whence there 1863 Mark xv. 25. 1864 Quasi. 1865 Matt. xxvii. 45; Mark xv. 33; and Luke xxiii. 44. 1866 1 Cor. v. 7. 1867 Matt. xxvi. 66. is a kind of harmony in understanding that therewith began the preparation of the true passover, whose shadow was the passover of the Jews, that is, of the sacrificing of Christ, when the priests gave their sentence that He was to be sacrificed), certainly from that hour of the night, which is conjectured to have been then the ninth, on to the third hour of the day, when the evangelist Mark testifies that Christ was crucified, there are six hours, three of the night, and three of the day. Hence in the case of this parasceve of the passover, that is, the preparation of the sacrifice of Christ, which began with the ninth hour of the night, it was about the sixth hour; that is to say, the fifth hour was completed, and the sixth had already begun to run, when Pilate ascended the tribunal: for that same preparation, which had begun with the ninth hour of the night, still continued till the sacrifice of Christ, which was the event in course of preparation, was completed, which took place at the third hour, according to Mark, not of the preparation, but of the day; while it was also the sixth hour, not of the day, but of the preparation, by reckoning, of course, six hours from the ninth hour of the night to the third of the day. Of these two solutions of this difficult question let each choose the one that pleases him. But one will judge better what to choose who reads the very elaborate discussions on “The Harmony of the Evangelists.”1868 And if other solutions of it can also be found, the stability of gospel truth will have a more cumulative defense against the calumnies of unbelieving and profane vanity. And now, after these brief discussions, let us return to the narrative of the evangelist John.

3. “And they took Jesus,” he says, “and led Him away; and He, bearing His cross, went forth unto the place that is called Calvary, in the Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him.” Jesus, therefore, went to the place where He was to be crucified, bearing His cross. A grand spectacle! but if it be impiety that is the onlooker, a grand laughing-stock; if piety, a grand mystery: if impiety be the onlooker, a grand demonstration of ignominy; if piety, a grand bulwark of faith: if it is impiety that looketh on, it laughs at the King bearing, in place of His kingly rod, the tree of His punishment; if it is piety, it sees the King bearing the tree for His own crucifixion, which He was yet to affix even on the foreheads of kings, exposed to the contemptuous glances of the impious in connection with that wherein the hearts of saints were thereafter to glory. For to Paul, who was yet to say, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,”1869 He was commending that same cross of His by carrying it on His own shoulders, and bearing the candelabrum of that light that was yet to burn, and not to be placed under a bushel.1870 “Bearing,” therefore, “His cross, He went forth into the place that is called Calvary, in the Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him, and two others with Him on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.” These 1868 “On the Harmony of the Evangelists,” Book iii. chap. xiii. secs. 40–50. 1869 Gal. vi. 14. 1870 Matt. v. 15. two, as we have learned in the narrative of the other evangelists, were thieves with whom He was crucified, and between whom He was fixed,1871 whereof the prophecy sent before had declared, “And He was numbered among the transgressors.”1872

4. “And Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross, and the writing was, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, The King of the Jews.” For these three languages were conspicuous in that place beyond all others: the Hebrew on account of the Jews, who gloried in the law of God; the Greek, because of the wise men among the Gentiles; and the Latin, on account of the Romans, who at that very time were exercising sovereign power over many and almost all countries.

5. “Then said the chief priests of the Jews unto Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.” Oh the ineffable power of the working of God, even in the hearts of the ignorant! Was there not some hidden voice that sounded through Pilate’s inner man with a kind, if one may so say, of loud-toned silence, the words that had been prophesied so long before in the very letter of the Psalms, “Corrupt not the inscription of the title”?1873 Here, then, you see, he corrupted it not; what he has written he has written. But the high priests, who wished it to be corrupted, what did they say? “Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.” What is it, madmen, that you say? Why do you oppose the doing of that which you are utterly unable to alter? Will it by any such means become the less true that Jesus said, “I am King of the Jews”? If that cannot be tampered with which Pilate has written, can that be tampered with which the truth has uttered? But is Christ king only of the Jews, or of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also. For when He said in prophecy, “I am set king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion, declaring the decree of the Lord,” that no one might say, because of the hill of Zion, that He was set king over the Jews alone, He immediately added, “The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.”1874 Whence He Himself, speaking now with His own lips among the Jews, said, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd.”1875 Why then would we have some great mystery1876 to be understood in this superscription, wherein it was 1871 Matt. xxvii. 38; Mark xv. 27; and Luke xxiii. 33. 1872 Isa. liii. 12. 1873 Ps. lvii., lviii. 1874 Ps. ii. 6–8. 1875 Chap. x. 16. 1876 Sacramentum. written, “King of the Jews,” if Christ is king also of the Gentiles? For this reason, because it was the wild olive tree that was made partaker of the fatness of the olive tree, and not the olive tree that was made partaker of the bitterness of the wild olive tree.1877 For inasmuch as the title, “King of the Jews,” was truthfully written regarding Christ, who are they that are to be understood as the Jews but the seed of Abraham, the children of the promise, who are also the children of God? For “they,” saith the apostle, “who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.”1878 And the Gentiles were those to whom he said, “But if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”1879 Christ therefore is king of the Jews, but of those who are Jews by the circumcision of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God;1880 who belong to the Jerusalem that is free, our eternal mother in heaven, the spiritual Sarah, who casteth out the bond maid and her children from the house of liberty.1881 And therefore what Pilate wrote he wrote, because what the Lord said He said.

1. The things that were done beside the Lord’s cross, when at length He was now crucified, we would take up, in dependence on His help, in the present discourse. “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Him, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots.” It was done as the Jews wished; not that it was they themselves, but the soldiers who obeyed Pilate, who himself acted as judge, that crucified Jesus: and yet if we reflect on their wills, their plots, their endeavors, their delivering up, and, lastly, on their extorting clamors, it was the Jews certainly, more than any else, who crucified Jesus.

2. But we must not speak in a mere cursory way of the partition and dividing by lot of His garments. For although all the four evangelists make mention thereof, yet the others do so more briefly than John: and their notice of it is obscure, while his is in the plainest manner possible. For Matthew says, “And after they crucified Him, they parted His garments, casting lots.”1882 Mark: “And they crucified Him, and parted His garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take.”1883 Luke: “And they parted His raiment, and cast lots.”1884 But John has told us also how many parts they made of His garments, namely, four, that they might take one part apiece. From which it is apparent that there were four soldiers, who obeyed the governor’s orders in crucifying Him. For he plainly says: “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Him, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and likewise the coat,” where there is understood, they took: so that the meaning is, they took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and they took also His coat. And he so spake, that we might see that there was no lot cast on His other garments; but His coat, which they took along with the others, they did not similarly divide. For in regard to it he proceeds to explain, “Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.” And then telling us why they cast lots on it, he says, “They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be.” Hence it is clear that in the case of the other garments they had equal parts, so that there was no need to cast lots: but that as regards this one, they could not have had a part each without rending it, and thereby possessing themselves only of useless fragments of it; to prevent which, they preferred 1882 Matt. xxvii. 35. 1883 Mark xv. 24. 1884 Luke xxiii. 34. letting it come to one of them by lot. The account given by this evangelist is also in harmony with the testimony of prophecy, which he likewise immediately subjoins, saying, “That the scripture might be fulfilled which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots.” For He says not, they cast lots, but “they parted:” nor does He say, casting lots they parted; but while making no mention whatever of the lot in regard to the rest of the garments, He afterwards said, “and for my vesture they did cast lots,” in reference solely to the coat that remained. On which I shall speak as He Himself enables me, after I have first refuted the calumny, which may possibly arise, as if the evangelists disagreed with one another, by showing that the words of none of the others are inconsistent with the narrative of John.

3. For Matthew, in saying, “They parted His garments, casting lots,” wished it to be understood, that in the whole affair of parting the garments, the coat was also included, on which they cast lots; for in course of parting all the garments, of which it also was one, on it alone they cast lots. To the same purpose also are the words of Luke: “Parting His garments, they cast lots;” for in the process of parting they came to the coat whereon the lot was cast, that the entire parting of His garments among them might be completed. And what difference is there whether it is said, “Parting they cast lots,” according to Luke; or, “They parted, casting the lot,” according to Matthew: unless it be that Luke, in saying “lots,” used the plural for the singular number,—a form of speech that is not unusual in the Holy Scriptures, although some copies are found to have “lot,”1885 and not “lots”? Mark, therefore, is the only one who seems to have introduced any kind of difficulty; for in saying, “Casting the lot upon them, what every man should take,” his words seem to imply, as if the lot was cast on all the garments, and not on the coat alone. But here also brevity is the cause of the obscurity; for the words, “Casting the lot upon them,” are as if it were said, Casting the lot when they were in the process of division; which was also the case. For the partition of all His garments would not have been complete, had it not been declared by lot which of them also should get possession of the coat, so as thereby to bring any contention on the part of the dividers to an end, or rather prevent any such from arising. In saying, therefore, “What every man should take,” so far as that has to do with the lot, we must not take it as referring to all the garments that were divided; for the lot was cast, who should take the coat: whereof having omitted to describe the particular form, and how, in the equal division that was made of the parts, it remained by itself, in order, without being rent, to be awarded by lot, he therefore made use of the expression, “what every man should take,” in other words, who it was that should take it: as if the whole were thus expressed, They parted His garments, casting the lot upon them, who should take the coat, which had remained over in addition to their equal shares of the rest.

1. The Lord being now crucified, and the parting of His garments having also been completed by the casting of the lot, let us look at what the evangelist John thereafter relates. “And these things,” he says, “the soldiers did. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home.” This, without a doubt, was the hour whereof Jesus, when about to turn the water into wine, had said to His mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.”1895 This hour, therefore, He had foretold, which at that time had not yet arrived, when it should be His to acknowledge her at the point of death, and with reference to which He had been born as a mortal man. At that time, therefore, when about to engage in divine acts, He repelled, as one unknown, her who was the mother, not of His divinity, but of His human infirmity; but now, when in the midst of human sufferings, He commended with human affection [the mother] by whom He had become man. For then, He who had created Mary became known in His power; but now, that which Mary had brought forth was hanging on the cross.1896

2. A passage, therefore, of a moral character is here inserted. The good Teacher does what He thereby reminds us ought to be done, and by His own example instructed His disciples that care for their parents ought to be a matter of concern to pious children: as if that tree to which the members of the dying One were affixed were the very chair of office from which the Master was imparting instruction. From this wholesome doctrine it was that the Apostle Paul had learned what he taught in turn, when he said, “But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”1897 And what are so much home concerns to any one, as parents to children, or children to parents? Of this most wholesome precept, therefore, the very Master of the saints set the example from Himself, when, not as God for the hand-maid whom He had created and governed, but as a man for the mother, of whom He had been created, and whom He was now leaving behind, He provided in some measure another son in place of Himself. And why He did so, He indicates in the words that follow: for the evangelist says, “And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own,” speaking of himself. In this way, indeed, he usually refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved: who certainly loved 1895 Chap. ii. 4. 1896 See Tract. VIII. 1897 1 Tim. v. 8. them all, but him beyond the others, and with a closer familiarity, so that He even made him lean upon His bosom at supper;1898 in order, I believe, in this way to commend the more highly the divine excellence of this very gospel, which He was thereafter to preach through his instrumentality.

3. But what was this “his own,” unto which John took the mother of the Lord? For he was not outside the circle of those who said unto Him, “Lo, we have left all, and followed Thee.” No, but on that same occasion he had also heard the words, Every one that hath forsaken these things for my sake, shall receive an hundred times as much in this world.1899 That disciple, therefore, had an hundredfold more than he had cast away, whereunto to receive the mother of Him who had graciously bestowed it all. But it was in that society that the blessed John had received an hundredfold, where no one called anything his own, but they had all things in common; even as it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. For the apostles were as if having nothing, and yet possessing all things.1900 How was it, then, that the disciple and servant received unto his own the mother of his Lord and Master, where no one called anything his own? Or, seeing we read a little further on in the same book, “For as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of them, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need,”1901 are we not to understand that such distribution was made to this disciple of what was needful, that there was also added to it the portion of the blessed Mary, as if she were his mother; and ought we not the rather so to take the words, “From that hour the disciple took her unto his own,” that everything necessary for her was entrusted to his care? He received her, therefore, not unto his own lands, for he had none of his own; but to his own dutiful services, the discharge of which, by a special dispensation, was entrusted to himself.

4. He then adds: “After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and fixed it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.” Who has the power of so adjusting what he does, as this Man had of arranging all that He suffered? But this Man was the Mediator between God and men; the Man of whom we read in prophecy, He is man also, and who shall acknowledge Him? for the men who did such things acknowledged not this Man as God. For He who was manifest as man, was hid as God: He who was manifest suffered all these things, and He 1898 Chap. xiii. 23. 1899 Matt. xix. 27, 29. 1900 2 Cor. vi. 10. 1901 Acts iv. 32–35. Himself also, who was hid, arranged them all. He saw, therefore, that all was accomplished that required to be done before He received the vinegar, and gave up the ghost; and that this also might be accomplished which the scripture had foretold, “And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,”1902 He said, “I thirst:” as if it were, One thing still you have failed to do, give me what you are. For the Jews were themselves the vinegar, degenerated as they were from the wine of the patriarchs and prophets; and filled like a full vessel with the wickedness of this world, with hearts like a sponge, deceitful in the formation of its cavernous and tortuous recesses. But the hyssop, whereon they placed the sponge filled with vinegar, being a lowly herb, and purging the heart, we fitly take for the humility of Christ Himself; which they thus enclosed, and imagined they had completely ensnared. Hence we have it said in the psalm, “Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed.”1903 For it is by Christ’s humility that we are cleansed; because, had He not humbled Himself, and became obedient unto the death of the cross,1904 His blood certainly would not have been shed for the remission of sins, or, in other words, for our cleansing.

5. Nor need we be disturbed with the question, how the sponge could be applied to His mouth when He was lifted up from the earth on the cross. For as we read in the other evangelists, what is omitted by this one, it was fixed on a reed,1905 so that such drink as was contained in the sponge might be raised to the highest part of the cross. By the reed, however, the scripture was signified, which was fulfilled by this very act. For as a tongue is called either Greek or Latin, or any other, significant of the sound, which is uttered by the tongue; so the reed may give its name to the letter which is written with a reed. We most usually, however, call those tongues that express the sounds of the human voice: while in calling scripture a reed, the very rareness of the thing only enhances the mystical nature of that which it symbolizes. A wicked people did such things, a compassionate Christ suffered them. They who did them, knew not what they did; but He who suffered, not only knew what was done, and why it was so, but also wrought what was good through those who were doing what was evil.

6. “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished.” What, but all that prophecy had foretold so long before? And then, because nothing now remained that still required to be done before He died, as if He, who had power to lay down His life and to take it up again,1906 had at length completed all for whose completion He was waiting, “He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.” Who can thus sleep when he pleases, as Jesus 1902 Ps. lxix. 21. 1903 Ps. li. 7. 1904 Phil. ii. 8. 1905 Matt. xxvii. 48, and Mark xv. 36. 1906 Chap. x. 18. died when He pleased? Who is there that thus puts off his garment when he pleases, as He put off His flesh at His pleasure? Who is there that thus departs1907 when he pleases, as He departed this life1908 at His pleasure? How great the power, to be hoped for or dreaded, that must be His as judge, if such was the power He exhibited as a dying man!

1. After that the Lord Jesus had accomplished all that He foreknew required accomplishment before His death, and had, when it pleased Himself, given up the ghost, what followed thereafter, as related by the evangelist, let us now consider. “The Jews therefore,” he says, “because it was the preparation (parasceve), that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath-day (for that Sabbath-day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.” Not that their legs might be taken away, but the persons themselves whose legs were broken for the purpose of effecting their death, and permitting them to be detached from the tree, lest their continuing to hang on the crosses should defile the great festal day by the horrible spectacle of their day-long torments.

2. “Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs: but one of the soldiers with a spear laid open1909 His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.” A suggestive1910 word was made use of by the evangelist, in not saying pierced, or wounded His side, or anything else, but “opened;”1911 that thereby, in a sense, the gate of life might be thrown open, from whence have flowed forth the sacraments of the Church, without which there is no entrance to the life which is the true life. That blood was shed for the remission of sins; that water it is that makes up the health-giving cup, and supplies at once the laver of baptism and water for drinking. This was announced beforehand, when Noah was commanded to make a door in the side of the ark, 1912 whereby the animals might enter which were not destined to perish in the flood, and by which the Church was prefigured. Because of this, the first woman was formed from the side of the man when asleep,1913 and was called Life, and the mother of all living.1914 Truly it pointed to a great good, prior to the great evil of the transgression (in the guise of one thus lying asleep).1915 This second Adam bowed His head and fell asleep on the cross, that a spouse might be formed for Him from that which flowed from the sleeper’s side. O death, whereby 1909 Aperuit. 1910 Vigilans. 1911 Aperuit. 1912 Gen. vi. 16. 1913 Gen. ii. 22. 1914 Gen. iii. 20. 1915 This last clause is found only in three of the Augustinian mss. the dead are raised anew to life! What can be purer than such blood? What more healthgiving than such a wound?

3. “And he that saw it,” he says, “bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also might believe.” He said not, That ye also might know, but “that ye might believe;” for he knoweth who hath seen, that he who hath not seen might believe his testimony. And believing belongs more to the nature of faith than seeing. For what else is meant by believing than giving to faith a suitable reception? “For these things were done,” he adds, “that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of Him ye shall not break. And again, another scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they pierced.” He has furnished two testimonies from the Scriptures for each of the things which he has recorded as having been done. For to the words, “But when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs,” belongeth the testimony, “A bone of Him ye shall not break:” an injunction which was laid upon those who were commanded to celebrate the passover by the sacrifice of a sheep in the old law, which went before as a shadow of the passion of Christ. Whence “our passover has been offered, even Christ,”1916 of whom the prophet Isaiah also had predicted, “He shall be led as a lamb to the slaughter.”1917 In like manner to the words which he subjoined, “But one of the soldiers laid open His side with a spear,” belongeth the other testimony, “They shall look on Him whom they pierced;” where Christ is promised in the very flesh wherein He was afterwards to come to be crucified.

4. “And after this, Joseph of Arimathea (being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews) besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night at first, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.” We are not to explain the meaning by saying, “first bringing a mixture of myrrh,” but by attaching the word “first” to the preceding clause. For Nicodemus had at first come to Jesus by night, as recorded by this same John in the earlier portions of his Gospel.1918 By the statement given us here, therefore, we are to understand that Nicodemus came to Jesus, not then only, but then for the first time; and that he was a regular comer afterwards, in order by hearing to become a disciple; which is certified, nowadays at least, to almost all nations in the revelation of the body of the most blessed Stephen.1919 “Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.” The evangelist, I think, was not without a purpose in so framing his 1916 1 Cor. v. 7. 1917 Isa. liii. 7. 1918 Chap. iii. 1, 2. 1919 This revelation, whereby the body of Nicodemus was discovered, is referred to the close of the year 415, by those who trust in the authority of the Presbyter Lucian, in a small book written on the subject.—Migne. words, “as the manner of the Jews is to bury;” for in this way, unless I am mistaken, he has admonished us that, in duties of this kind, which are observed to the dead, the customs of every nation ought to be preserved.

5. “Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.” As in the womb of the Virgin Mary no one was conceived before Him, and no one after Him, so in this sepulchre there was no one buried before Him, and no one after Him. “There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews’ preparation; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.” He would have us to understand that the burial was hurried, lest the evening should overtake them; when it was no longer permitted to do any such thing, because of the preparation, which the Jews among us are more in the habit of calling in Latin, coena pura (the pure meal).

6. “And on the first of the week came Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and saw the stone taken away from the sepulchre.” The first of the week1920 is what Christian practice now calls the Lord’s day, because of the resurrection of the Lord.1921 “She ran, therefore, and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him.” Some of the Greek codices have, “They have taken my Lord,” which may likely enough have been said by the stronger than ordinary affection of love and handmaid relationship; but we have not found it in the several codices to which we have had access.

7. “Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together: and that other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.” The repetition here is worthy of notice and of commendation for the way in which a return is made to what had previously been omitted, and yet is added just as if it followed in due order. For after having already said, “they came to the sepulchre,” he goes back to tell us how they came, and says, “so they ran both together,” etc. Where he shows that, by outrunning his companion, there came first to the sepulchre that other disciple, by whom he means himself, while he relates all1922 as if speaking of another.

8. “And he stooping down,” he says, “saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and saw the linen clothes lying, and the napkin, which had been about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but folded up in one place by itself.” Do we suppose these things have no meaning? 1920 Una Sabbati. 1921 Augustin here adds, quem Matthæus solus in Evangelistis primam Sabbati nominavit (Matt. xxviii. 1) contrasting primam with una. 1922 Some editions here insert into the text, More sanctæ Scripturæ, “after the manner of Holy Scripture.” Others enclose it within brackets.—Migne. I can suppose no such thing. But we hasten on to other points, on which we are compelled to linger by the need there is for investigation, or some other kind of obscurity. For in such things as are self-manifest, the inquiry into the meaning even of individual details is, indeed, a subject of holy delight, but only for those who have leisure, which is not the case with us.

9. “Then went in also that other disciple who had come first to the sepulchre.” He came first, and entered last. This also of a certainty is not without a meaning, but I am without the leisure needful for its explanation. “And he saw, and believed.” Here some, by not giving due attention, suppose that John believed that Jesus had risen again; but there is no indication of this from the words that follow. For what does he mean by immediately adding, “For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead”? He could not then have believed that He had risen again, when he did not know that it behoved Him to rise again. What then did he see? what was it that he believed? What but this, that he saw the sepulchre empty, and believed what the woman had said, that He had been taken away from the tomb? “For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.” Thus also when they heard of it from the Lord Himself, although it was uttered in the plainest terms, yet from their custom of hearing Him speaking by parables, they did not understand, and believed that something else was His meaning. But we shall put off what follows till another discourse.

1. Mary Magdalene had brought the news to His disciples, Peter and John, that the Lord was taken away from the sepulchre; and they, when they came thither, found only the linen clothes wherewith the body had been shrouded; and what else could they believe but what she had told them, and what she had herself also believed? “Then the disciples went away again unto their own” (home); that is to say, where they were dwelling, and from which they had run to the sepulchre. “But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping.” For while the men returned, the weaker sex was fastened to the place by a stronger affection. And the eyes, which had sought the Lord and had not found Him, had now nothing else to do but weep, deeper in their sorrow that He had been taken away from the sepulchre than that He had been slain on the tree; seeing that in the case even of such a Master, when His living presence was withdrawn from their eyes, His remembrance also had ceased to remain. Such grief, therefore, now kept the woman at the sepulchre. “And as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre.” Why she did so I know not. For she was not ignorant that He whom she sought was no longer there, since she had herself also carried word to the disciples that He had been taken from thence; while they, too, had come to the sepulchre, and had sought the Lord’s body, not merely by looking, but also by entering, and had not found it. What then does it mean, that, as she wept, she stooped down, and looked again into the sepulchre? Was it that her grief was so excessive that she hardly thought she could believe either their eyes or her own? Or was it rather by some divine impulse that her mind led her to look within? For look she did, “and saw two angels in white, sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.” Why is it that one was sitting at the head, and the other at the feet? Was it, since those who in Greek are called angels are in Latin nuntii in English, news-bearers, that in this way they signified that the gospel of Christ was to be preached from head to foot, from the beginning even to the end? “They say to her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” The angels forbade her tears: for by such a position what else did they announce, but that which in some way or other was a future joy? For they put the question, “Why weepest thou?” as if they had said, Weep not. But she, supposing they had put the question from ignorance, unfolded the cause of her tears. “Because,” she said, “they have taken away my Lord:” calling her Lord’s inanimate body her Lord, meaning a part for the whole; just as all of us acknowledge that Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord, who of course is at once both the Word and soul and flesh, was nevertheless crucified and buried, while it was only His flesh that was laid in the sepulchre. “And I know not,” she added, “where they have laid Him.” This was the greater cause of sorrow, because she knew not where to go to mitigate her grief. But the hour had now come when the joy, in some measure announced by the angels, who forbade her tears, was to succeed the weeping.

2. Lastly, “when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, saith unto Him, Sir, If thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master.” Let no one speak ill of the woman because she called the gardener, Sir (domine), and Jesus, Master. For there she was asking, here she was recognizing; there she was showing respect to a person of whom she was asking a favor, here she was recalling the Teacher of whom she was learning to discern things human and divine. She called one lord (sir), whose handmaid she was not, in order by him to get at the Lord to whom she belonged. In one sense, therefore, she used the word Lord when she said, “They have taken away my Lord; and in another, when she said, Sir (lord), if thou hast borne Him hence.” For the prophet also called those lords who were mere men, but in a different sense from Him of whom it is written, “The Lord is His name.”1923 But how was it that this woman, who had already turned herself back to see Jesus, when she supposed Him to be the gardener, and was actually talking with Him, is said to have again turned herself, in order to say unto Him “Rabboni,” but just because, when she then turned herself in body, she supposed Him to be what He was not, while now, when turned in heart, she recognized Him to be what He was.

3. “Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.” There are points in these words which we must examine with brevity indeed, but with somewhat more than ordinary attention. For Jesus was giving a lesson in faith to the woman, who had recognized Him as her Master, and called Him so in her reply; and this gardener was sowing in her heart, as in His own garden, the grain of mustard seed. What then is meant by “Touch me not”? And just as if the reason of such a prohibition would be sought, He added, “for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” What does this mean? If, while standing on earth, He is not to be touched, how could He be touched by men when sitting in heaven? For certainly, before He ascended, He presented Himself to the touch of the disciples, when He said, as testified by the evangelist Luke, “Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have;”1924 or when He said to Thomas the disciple, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and put forth thy hand, and thrust it into my side.” And who could be so absurd as to affirm that He was willing indeed to be touched by the disciples before He ascended to the Father, but refused it in the case of women 1923 Ps. lxviii. 4. 1924 Luke xxiv. 39. till after His ascension? But no one, even had any the will, was to be allowed to run into such folly. For we read that women also, after His resurrection and before His ascension to the Father, touched Jesus, among whom was Mary Magdalene herself; for it is related by Matthew that Jesus met them, and said, “All hail. And they approached, and held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him.”1925 This was passed over by John, but declared as the truth by Matthew. It remains, therefore, that some sacred mystery must lie concealed in these words; and whether we discover it or utterly fail to do so, yet we ought to be in no doubt as to its actual existence. Accordingly, either the words, “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father,” had this meaning, that by this woman the Church of the Gentiles was symbolized, which did not believe on Christ till He had actually ascended to the Father, or that in this way Christ wished Himself to be believed on; in other words, to be touched spiritually, that He and the Father are one. For He has in a manner ascended to the Father, to the inward perception of him who has made such progress in the knowledge of Christ that he acknowledges Him as equal with the Father: in any other way He is not rightly touched, that is to say, in any other way He is not rightly believed on. But Mary might have still so believed as to account Him unequal with the Father, and this certainly is forbidden her by the words, “Touch me not;” that is, Believe not thus on me according to thy present notions; let not your thoughts stretch outwards to what I have been made in thy behalf, without passing beyond to that whereby thou hast thyself been made. For how could it be otherwise than carnally that she still believed on Him whom she was weeping over as a man? “For I am not yet ascended,” He says, “to my Father:” there shalt thou touch me, when thou believest me to be God, in no wise unequal with the Father. “But go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father.” He saith not, Our Father: in one sense, therefore, is He mine, in another sense, yours; by nature mine, by grace yours. “And my God, and your God.” Nor did He say here, Our God: here, therefore, also is He in one sense mine, in another sense yours: my God; under whom I also am as man; your God, between whom and you I am mediator.

4. “Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and He hath spoken these things unto me. Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus, and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side.” For nails had pierced His hands, a spear had laid open His side: and there the marks of the wounds are preserved for healing the hearts of the doubting. But the shutting of doors presented no obstacle to the matter of His body, wherein Godhead resided. He indeed could enter without their being opened, by whose birth the virginity of His mother remained inviolate, “Then were the disciples glad 1925 Matt. xxviii. 9. when they saw the Lord. Then said He unto them again, Peace be unto you.” Reiteration is confirmation; for He Himself gives by the prophet a promised peace upon peace.1926 “As the Father hath sent me,” He adds, “even so send I you.” We know the Son to be equal to the Father; but here we recognize the words of the Mediator. For He exhibits Himself as occupying a middle position when He says, He me, and I you. “And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” By breathing on them He signified that the Holy Spirit was the Spirit, not of the Father alone, but likewise His own. “Whose soever sins,” He continues, “ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever ye retain, they are retained.” The Church’s love, which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, discharges the sins of all who are partakers with itself, but retains the sins of those who have no participation therein. Therefore it is, that after saying “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” He straightway added this regarding the remission and retention of sins.

5. “But Thomas, one of the twelve, who is called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe. And after eight days, again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God.” He saw and touched the man, and acknowledged the God whom he neither saw nor touched; but by the means of what he saw and touched, he now put far away from him every doubt, and believed the other. “Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed.” He saith not, Thou hast touched me, but, “Thou hast seen me,” because sight is a kind of general sense. For sight is also habitually named in connec tion with the other four senses: as when we say, Listen, and see how well it sounds; smell it, and see how well it smells; taste it, and see how well it savors; touch it, and see how hot it is. Everywhere has the word, See, made itself heard, although sight, properly speaking, is allowed to belong only to the eyes. Hence here also the Lord Himself says, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands:” and what else does He mean but, Touch and see? And yet he had no eyes in his finger. Whether therefore it was by looking, or also by touching, “Because thou hast seen me,” He says, “thou hast believed.” Although it may be affirmed that the disciple dared not so to touch, when He offered Himself for the purpose; for it is not written, And Thomas touched Him. But whether it was by gazing only, or also by touching that he saw and believed, what follows rather proclaims and commends the faith of the Gentiles: “Blessed are they that have 1926 Isa. xxvi. 3, margin. not seen, and yet have believed.” He made use of words in the past tense, as One who, in His predestinating purpose, knew what was future, as if it had already taken place. But the present discourse must be kept from the charge of prolixity: the Lord will give us the opportunity to discourse at another time on the topics that remain.

1. After telling us of the incident in connection with which the disciple Thomas had offered to his touch the places of the wounds in Christ’s body, and saw what he would not believe, and believed, the evangelist John interposes these words, and says: “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life through His name.” This paragraph indicates, as it were, the end of the book; but there is afterwards related how the Lord manifested Himself at the sea of Tiberias, and in the draught of fishes made special reference to the mystery of the Church, as regards its future character, in the final resurrection of the dead. I think, therefore, it is fitted to give special prominence thereto, that there has been thus interposed, as it were, an end of the book, and that there should be also a kind of preface to the narrative that was to follow, in order in some measure to give it a position of greater eminence. The narrative itself begins in this way: “After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias; and on this wise showed He (Himself). There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples. Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee.”

2. The inquiry is usually made in connection with this fishing of the disciples, why Peter and the sons of Zebedee returned to what they were before being called by the Lord; for they were fishers when He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”1927 And they put such reality into their following of Him then, that they left all in order to cleave to Him as their Master: so much so, that when the rich man went away from Him in sorrow, because of His saying to him, “Go sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow me,” Peter said unto Him, “Lo, we have forsaken all, and followed Thee.”1928 Why is it then that now, by the abandonment as it were of their apostleship, they become what they were, and seek again what they had forsaken, as if forgetful of the words they had once listened to, “No man, putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of heaven”?1929 Had they done so when Jesus was lying in the grave, before He rose from the dead,—which of course they could not have done, as the day whereon He was crucified kept them all in closest attention till His burial, which took place before evening; while the next day was the Sabbath, when it was unlawful for 1927 Matt. iv. 19. 1928 Matt. xix. 21, 22, 27. 1929 Luke ix. 62. those who observed the ancestral custom to work at all; and on the third day the Lord rose again, and re called them to the hope which they had not yet begun to entertain regarding Him;—yet had they then done so, we might suppose it had been done under the influence of that despair which had taken possession of their minds. But now, after His restoration to them alive from the tomb, after the most evident truth of His revivified flesh offered to their eyes and hands, not only to be seen, but also to be touched and handled; after inspecting the very marks of the wounds, even to the confession of the Apostle Thomas, who had previously declared that he would not otherwise believe; after the reception by His breathing on them of the Holy Spirit, and after the words poured from His lips into their ears, “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever ye retain, they are retained:” they suddenly become again what they had been, fishers, not of men, but of fishes.

3. We have therefore to give those who are disturbed by this the answer, that they were not prohibited from seeking necessary sustenance by their manual craft, when lawful in itself, and warranted so long as they preserved their apostleship intact, if at any time they had no other means of gaining a livelihood. Unless any one have the boldness to imagine or to affirm, that the Apostle Paul attained not to the perfection of those who left all and followed Christ, seeing that, in order not to become a burden to any of those to whom he preached the gospel, he worked with his own hands for his support:1930 wherein we find rather the fulfillment of his own words, “I labored more abundantly than they all;” and to which he added, “yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me:”1931 to make it manifest that this also was to be imputed to the grace of God, that both with mind and body he was able to labor so much more abundantly than they all, that he neither ceased from preaching the gospel, nor drew, like them, his present support out of the gospel; while he was sowing it much more widely and fruitfully through multitudes of nations where the name of Christ had never previously been proclaimed. Whereby he showed that living, that is, deriving their subsistence, by the gospel, was not imposed on the apostles as a necessity, but conferred on them as a power. And of this power the same apostle makes mention when he says: “If we have sown to you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we reap your carnal things? If others are partakers of this power among you, are not we rather? But,” he adds, “we have not used this power.” And a little afterwards he says: “They who serve the altar are partakers with the altar: even so hath the Lord ordained, that they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel; but I have used none of these things.” It is clear enough, therefore, that it was not enjoined on the apostles, but put in their power, not to find their living otherwise than by the gospel, and of those to whom by preaching the gospel they sowed spiritual things, to reap their 1930 2 Thess. iii. 8. 1931 1 Cor. xv. 10. carnal things; that is, to take their bodily support, and, as the soldiers of Christ, to receive the wages due to them, as from the inhabitants of provinces subject to Christ.1932 Hence that same illustrious soldier had said a little before, in reference to this matter, “Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges?”1933 Which he nevertheless did himself; for he labored more abundantly than they all. If, then, the blessed Paul—that he might not use with them the power which he certainly possessed along with the other preachers of the gospel, but went a warfare at his own charges, that the Gentiles, who were utterly averse to the name of Christ, might not take offense at his teaching, as something offered them for a money equivalent,—in a way very different from that in which he had been educated, learned an altogether new art, that while the teacher supports himself with his own hands, none of his hearers might be burdened; how much rather did the blessed Peter, who had beforetimes been a fisherman, do what he was already acquainted with, if at that present time he found no other means of gaining a livelihood?

4. But some one will reply, And why did he not find them, when the Lord had promised, saying, “Seek first the kingdom and righteousness of God, and all these things shall be added unto you”?1934 Precisely also in this very way did the Lord fulfill His promise. For who else placed there the fishes that were to be caught, but He, who, we are bound to believe, threw them into the penury that compelled them to go a fishing, for no other reason than that He wished to show them the miracle He had prepared, that so He might both feed the preachers of His gospel, and at the same time enhance that gospel itself, by the great mystery which He was about to impress on their minds by the number of the fishes? And on this subject we also ought now to be telling you what He Himself has set before us.

5. “Simon Peter,” therefore, “saith, I go a fishing.” Those who were with him “say unto him, We also go with thee. And they went forth, and entered into a ship; and that night they caught nothing. But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore; but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered Him, No. He saith unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his coat unto him, for he was naked, and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship (for they were not far from the land, but as it were two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals laid, and a fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. Simon Peter went up, 1932 Sicut a provincialibus Christi. 1933 1 Cor. ix. 11–15, 7. 1934 Matt. vi. 33. and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.”

6. This is a great mystery in the great Gospel of John; and to commend it the more forcibly to our attention, the last chapter has been made its place of record. Accordingly, inasmuch as there were seven disciples taking part in that fishing, Peter, and Thomas, and Nathaneal, and the two sons of Zebedee, and two others whose names are withheld, they point, by their septenary number, to the end of time. For there is a revolution of all time in seven days. To this also pertains the statement, that when the morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore; for the shore likewise is the limit of the sea, and signifies therefore the end of the world. The same end of the world is shown also by the act of Peter, in drawing the net to land, that is, to the shore. Which the Lord has Himself elucidated, when in a certain other place He drew His similitude from a fishing net let down into the sea: “And they drew it,” He said, “to the shore.” And in explanation of what that shore was, He added, “So will it be in the end of the world.”1935

7. That, however, is a parable in word, not one embodied in outward action; and just as in the passage before us the Lord indicated by an outward action the kind of character the Church would have in the end of the world, so in the same way, by that other fishing, He indicated its present character. In doing the one at the commencement of His preaching and this latter after His resurrection, He showed thereby in the former case that the capture of fishes signified the good and bad presently existing in the Church; but in the latter, the good only, whom it will contain everlastingly, when the resurrection of the dead shall have been completed in the end of this world. Furthermore, on that previous occasion Jesus stood not, as here, on the shore, when He gave orders for the taking of the fish, but “entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land; and He sat down therein, and taught the crowds. And when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” There also they put the fishes that were caught into the ship, and did not, as here, draw the net to the shore. By these signs, and any others that may be found, on the former occasion the Church was prefigured as it exists in this world, and on the other, as it shall be in the end of the world: the one accordingly took place before, and the other subsequently to the resurrection of the Lord; because there we were signified by Christ as called, and here as raised from the dead. On that occasion the nets are not let down on the right side, that the good alone might not be signified, nor on the left, lest the application should be limited to the bad; but without any reference to either side, He says, “Let down your nets for a draught,” that we may understand the good and bad as mingled together: while on this He says, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship,” to signify those who stood on the right hand, the good 1935 Matt. xiii. 48, 49. alone. There the net was broken on account of the schisms that were meant to be signified; but here, as then there will be no more schisms in that supreme peace of the saints, the evangelist was entitled to say, “And for all they were so great,” that is, so large, “yet was not the net broken;” as if with reference to the previous time when it was broken, and a commendation of the good that was here in comparison with the evil that preceded. There the multitude of fishes caught was so great, that the two vessels were filled and began to sink,1936 that is, were weighed down to the point of sinking; for they did not actually sink, but were in extreme jeopardy. For whence exist in the Church the great evils under which we groan, save from the impossibility of withstanding the enormous multitude that, almost to the entire subversion of discipline, gain an entrance, with their morals so utterly at variance with the pathway of the saints? Here, however, they cast the net on the right side, “and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.” What is meant by the words, “Now they were not able to draw it,” but this, that those who belong to the resurrection of life, that is to say, to the right hand, and depart this life within the nets of the Christian name, will be made manifest only on the shore, in other words, when they shall rise from the dead at the end of the world? Accordingly, they were not able to draw the nets so as to discharge into the vessel the fishes they had caught, as was done with all of those wherewith the net was broken, and the boats laden to sinking. But the Church possesses those right-hand ones after the close of this life in the sleep of peace, lying hid as it were in the deep, till the net reach the shore whither it is being drawn, as it were two hundred cubits. And as on that first occasion it was done by two vessels, with reference to the circumcision and the uncircumcision; so in this place, by the two hundred cubits, I am of opinion that there is symbolized, with reference to the elect of both classes, the circumcision and the uncircumcision, as it were two separate hundreds; because the number that passes to the right hand is represented summarily by hundreds. And last of all, in that former fishing the number of fishes is not expressed, as if the words were there acted on that were uttered by the prophet, “I have declared and spoken; they are multiplied beyond number:” 1937 while here there are none beyond calculation, but the definite number of a hundred and fifty and three; and of the reason of this number we must now, with the Lord’s help, give some account.

8. For if we determine on the number that should indicate the law, what else can it be but ten? For we have absolute certainty that the Decalogue of the law, that is, those ten wellknown precepts, were first written by the finger of God on two tables of stone.1938 But the law, when it is not aided by grace, maketh transgressors, and is only in the letter, on account of which the apostle specially declared, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”1939 Let 1936 Luke v. 3–7. 1937 Ps. xl. 5. 1938 Deut. ix. 10. 1939 2 Cor. iii. 6. the spirit then be added to the letter, lest the letter kill him whom the spirit maketh not alive, and let us work out the precepts of the law, not in our own strength, but by the grace of the Saviour. But when grace is added to the law, that is, the spirit to the letter, there is, in a kind of way, added to ten the number of seven. For this number, namely seven, is testified by the documents of holy writ given us for perusal, to signify the Holy Spirit. For example, sanctity or sanctification properly pertains to the Holy Spirit, whence, as the Father is a spirit, and the Son a spirit, because God is a spirit,1940 so the Father is holy and the Son holy, yet the Spirit of both is called peculiarly by the name of the Holy Spirit. Where, then, was there the first distinct mention of sanctification in the law but on the seventh day? For God sanctified not the first day, when He made the light; nor the second, when He made the firmament; nor the third, when He separated the sea from the land, and the land brought forth grass and timber; nor the fourth, wherein the stars were created; nor the fifth, wherein were created the animals that live in the waters or fly in the air; nor the sixth, when the terrestrial living soul and man himself were created; but He sanctified the seventh day, wherein He rested from all His works.1941 The Holy Spirit, therefore, is aptly represented by the septenary number. The prophet Isaiah likewise says, “The Spirit of God shall rest on Him;” and thereafter calls our attention to that Spirit in His septenary work or grace, by saying, “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and piety; and He shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of God.”1942 And what of the Revelation? Are they not there called the seven Spirits of God,1943 while there is only one and the same Spirit dividing to every one severally as He will?1944 But the septenary operation of the one Spirit was so called by the Spirit Himself, whose own presence in the writer led to their being spoken of as the seven Spirits. Accordingly, when to the number of ten, representing the law, we add the Holy Spirit as represented by seven, we have seventeen; and when this number is used for the adding together of every several number it contains, from 1 up to itself, the sum amounts to one hundred and fifty-three. For if you add 2 to 1, you have 3 of course; if to these you add 3 and 4, the whole makes 10; and then if you add all the numbers that follow up to 17, the whole amounts to the foresaid number; that is, if to 10, which you had reached by adding all together from 1 to 4, you add 5, you have 15; to these add 6, and the result is 21; then add 7, and you have 28; to this add 8, and 9, and 10, and 1940 Chap. iv. 24. 1941 Gen. i., ii. 3. 1942 Isa. xi. 2, 3. 1943 Rev. iii. 1. 1944 1 Cor. xii. 11. you get 55; to this add 11 and 12, and 13, and you have 91; and to this again add 14, 15, and 16, and it comes to 136; and then add to this the remaining number of which we have been speaking, namely, 17, and it will make up the number of fishes. But it is not on that account merely a hundred and fifty-three saints that are meant as hereafter to rise from the dead unto life eternal, but thousands of saints who have shared in the grace of the Spirit, by which grace harmony is established with the law of God, as with an adversary; so that through the life-giving Spirit the letter no longer kills, but what is commanded by the letter is fulfilled by the help of the Spirit, and if there is any deficiency it is pardoned. All therefore who are sharers in such grace are symbolized by this number, that is, are symbolically represented. This number has, besides, three times over, the number of fifty, and three in addition, with reference to the mystery of the Trinity; while, again, the number of fifty is made up by multiplying 7 by 7, with the addition of 1, for 7 times 7 make 49. And the 1 is added to show that there is one who is expressed by seven on account of His sevenfold operation; and we know that it was on the fiftieth day after our Lord’s ascension that the Holy Spirit was sent, for whom the disciples were commanded to wait according to the promise.1945

9. It was not, then, without a purpose that these fishes were described as so many in number, and so large in size, that is, as both an hundred and fifty-three, and large. For so it is written, “And He drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three.” For when the Lord said, “I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill,” because about to give the Spirit, through whom the law might be fulfilled, and to add thereby, as it were, seven to ten; after interposing a few other words He proceeded, “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. The latter, therefore, may possibly belong to the number of great fishes. But he that is the least, who undoes in deed what he teaches in word, may be in such a church as is signified by that first capture of fishes, which contains both good and bad, for it also is called the kingdom of heaven, as He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of ever kind;”1946 where He wishes the good as well as the bad to be understood, and of whom He declares that they are yet to be separated on the shore, to wit, at the end of the world. And lastly, to show that those least ones are reprobates who teach by word of mouth the good which they undo by their evil lives, and that they will not be even the least, as it were, in the life that is eternal, but will have no place there at all; after saying, “He shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven,” He immediately added, “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 1945 Acts i. 4; ii. 2–4. 1946 Matt. xiii. 47. heaven.”1947 Such, doubtless—these scribes and Pharisees—are those who sit in Moses’ seat, and of whom He says, “Do ye what they say, but do not what they do; for they say, and do not.”1948 They teach in sermons what they undo by their morals. It therefore follows that he who is least in the kingdom of heaven, as the Church now exists, shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, as the Church shall be hereafter; for by teaching what he himself is in the habit of breaking, he can have no place in the company of those who do what they teach, and therefore will not be in the number of great fishes, seeing it is he “who shall do and teach that shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” And because he will be great here, therefore shall he be there, where he that is least shall not be. Yea, so great will they certainly be there, that he who is less there is greater than the greatest here.1949 And yet those who are great here, that is, who do the good that they teach in that kingdom of heaven into which the net gathereth good and bad, shall be greater still in that eternal state of the heavenly kingdom,—those, I mean, who are indicated by the fishes here as belonging to the right hand and to the resurrection of life. We have still to discourse, as God shall grant us ability, on the meal that the Lord took with those seven disciples, and on the words He spake after the meal, as well as on the close of the Gospel itself; but these are topics that cannot be included in the present lecture.

1. With this third manifestation of Himself by the Lord to His disciples after His resurrection, the Gospel of the blessed Apostle John is brought to a close, of which we have already lectured through the earlier part as we were able, on to the place where it is related that an hundred and fifty-three fishes were taken by the disciples to whom He showed Himself, and for all they were so large, yet were not the nets broken. What follows we have now to take into consideration, and to discuss as the Lord enables us, and as the various points may appear to demand. When the fishing was over, “Jesus saith unto them, Come [and] dine. And none of those who sat down dared to ask Him, Who art Thou? knowing that it was the Lord.” If, then, they knew, what need was there to ask? and if there was no need, wherefore is it said, “they dared not,” as if there were need, but, from some fear or other, they dared not? The meaning here, therefore, is: so great was the evidence of the truth that Jesus Himself had appeared to these disciples, that not one of them dared not merely to deny, but even to doubt it; for had any of them doubted it, he ought certainly to have asked. In this sense, therefore, it was said, “No one dared to ask Him, Who art Thou?” as if it were, No one dared to doubt that it was He Himself.

2. “And Jesus cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise.” We are likewise told here, you see, on what they dined; and of this dinner we also will say something that is sweet and salutary, if we, too, are made by Him to partake of the food. It is related above that these disciples, when they came to the land, “saw a fire of coals laid, and a fish laid thereon, and bread.” Here we are not to understand that the bread also was laid upon the coals, but only to supply, They saw. And if we repeat this verb in the place where it ought to be supplied, the whole may read thus: They saw coals laid, and fish laid thereon, and they saw bread. Or rather in this way: They saw coals laid, and fish laid thereon; they saw also bread. At the Lord’s command they likewise brought of the fishes which they themselves had caught; and although their doing so might not be actually stated by the historian, yet there has been no silence in regard to the Lord’s command. For He says, “Bring of the fishes which ye have now caught.” And when we have such certainty that He gave the order, will any suppose that they failed to obey it? Of this, therefore, the Lord prepared the dinner for these His seven disciples, namely, of the fish which they had seen laid upon the coals, with an addition thereto from those which they had caught, and of the bread which we are told with equal distinctness that they had seen. The fish roasted is Christ having suffered; He Himself also is the bread that cometh down from heaven.1950 With Him is incorporated the Church, in order to the participation in everlasting blessedness. For this reason is it said, 1950 Chap. vi. 41. “Bring of the fish which ye have now caught,” that all of us who cherish this hope may know that we ourselves, through that septenary number of disciples whereby our universal community may in this passage be understood as symbolized, partake in this great sacrament, and are associated in the same blessedness. This is the Lord’s dinner with His own disciples, and herewith John, although having much besides that he might say of Christ, brings his Gospel, with profound thought and an eye to important lessons, to a close. For here the Church, such as it will be hereafter among the good alone, is signified by the draught of an hundred and fifty-three fishes; and to those who so believe, and hope, and love, there is demonstrated by this dinner their participation in such super-eminent blessedness.

3. “This was now,” he says, “the third time that Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after that He was risen from the dead.” And this we are to refer not to the manifestations themselves, but to the days (that is to say, taking the first day when He rose again, and the [second] eight days after, when the disciple Thomas saw and believed, and the third on this day when He so acted in connection with the fishes, although how many days afterwards it was that He did so we are not told); for on that first day He was seen more than once, as is shown by the collated testimonies of all the evangelists: but, as we have said, it is in accord- ance with the days that His manifestations are to be calculated, making this the third; for that manifestation is to be reckoned the first, and all one and the same, as included in one day, however often and to however many He showed Himself on the day of His resurrection; the second eight days afterwards, and this the third, and thereafter as often as He pleased on to the fortieth day, when He ascended into heaven, although all of them have not been recorded in Scripture.

4. “So when they had dined, He saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto Him, Feed my lambs. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wilt not. And this spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify God.” Such was the end reached by that denier and lover; elated by his presumption, prostrated by his denial, cleansed by his weeping, approved by his confession, crowned by his suffering, this was the end he reached, to die with a perfected love for the name of Him with whom, by a perverted forwardness, he had promised to die. He would do, when strengthened by His resurrection, what in his weakness he promised prematurely. For the needful order was that Christ should first die for Peter’s salvation, and then that Peter should die for the preaching of Christ. The boldness thus begun by human temerity was an utter inversion of the order that had been instituted by the Truth. Peter thought to lay down his life for Christ,1951 the one to be delivered in behalf of the Deliverer, seeing that Christ had come to lay down His life for all His own, including Peter also, which, you see, was now done. Now and henceforth a true, because graciously bestowed, strength of heart may be assumed for incurring death itself for the name of the Lord, and not a false one presumptuously usurped through an erroneous estimate of ourselves. Now there is no need that we should any more fear the passage out of the present life, because in the Lord’s resurrection we have a foregoing illustration of the life to come. Now thou hast cause, Peter, to be no longer afraid of death, because He liveth whom thou didst mourn when dead, and whom in thy carnal love thou didst try to hinder from dying in our behalf.1952 Thou didst dare to step in before the Leader, and thou didst tremble before His persecutor: now that the price has been paid for thee, it is thy duty to follow the Buyer, and follow Him even to the death of the cross. Thou hast heard the words of Him whom thou hast already proved to be truthful; He Himself hath foretold thy suffering, who formerly foretold thy denial.

5. But first the Lord asks what He knew, and that not once, but a second and a third time, whether Peter loved Him; and just as often He has the same answer, that He is loved, while just as often He gives Peter the same charge to feed His sheep. To the threefold denial there is now appended a threefold confession, that his tongue may not yield a feebler service to love than to fear, and imminent death may not appear to have elicited more from the lips than present life. Let it be the office of love to feed the Lord’s flock, if it was the signal of fear to deny the Shepherd. Those who have this purpose in feeding the flock of Christ, that they may have them as their own, and not as Christ’s, are convicted of loving themselves, and not Christ, from the desire either of boasting, or wielding power, or acquiring gain, and not from the love of obeying, serving, and pleasing God. Against such, therefore, there stands as a wakeful sentinel this thrice inculcated utterance of Christ, of whom the apostle complains that they seek their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ’s.1953 For what else mean the words, “Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep,” than if it were said, If thou lovest me, think not of feeding thyself, but feed my sheep as mine, and not as thine own; seek my glory in them, and not thine own; my dominion, and not thine; my gain, and not thine; lest thou be found in the fellowship of those who belong to the perilous times, lovers of their own selves, and all else that is joined on to this beginning of evils? For the apostle, after saying, “For men shall be lovers of their own selves,” proceeded to add, “Lovers of money, boastful, proud, 1951 Chap. xiii. 37. 1952 Matt. xvi. 21, 22. 1953 Phil. ii. 21. blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, wicked, irreligious, without affection, false accusers, incontinent, implacable, with out kindness, traitors, heady, blinded;1954 lovers of pleasures more than of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”1955 All these evils flow from that as their fountain which he stated first, “lovers of their own selves.” With great propriety, therefore, is Peter addressed, “Lovest thou me?” and found replying, “I love Thee:” and the command applied to him, “Feed my lambs,” and this a second and a third time. We have it also demonstrated here that love and liking are one and the same thing; for the Lord also in the last question said not Diligis me? but, Amas me? Let us, then, love not ourselves, but Him; and in feeding His sheep, let us be seeking the things which are His, not the things which are our own. For in some inexplicable way, I know not what, every one that loveth himself, and not God, loveth not himself; and whoever loveth God, and not himself, he it is that loveth himself. For he that cannot live by himself will certainly die by loving himself; he therefore loveth not himself who loves himself to his own loss of life. But when He is loved by whom life is preserved, a man by not loving himself only loveth the more, when it is for this reason that he loveth not himself [namely] that he may love Him by whom he lives. Let not those, then, who feed Christ’s sheep be “lovers of their own selves,” lest they feed them as if they were their own, and not His, and wish to make their own gain of them, as “lovers of money;” or to domineer over them, as “boastful;” or to glory in the honors which they receive at their hands, as “proud;” or to go the length even of originating heresies, as “blasphemers;” and not to give place to the holy fathers, as those who are “disobedient to parents;” and to render evil for good to those who wish to correct them, because unwilling to let them perish, as “unthankful;” to slay their own souls and those of others, as “wicked;” to outrage the motherly bowels of the Church, as “irreligious;” to have no sympathy with the weak, as those who are “without affection;” to attempt to traduce the character of the saints, as “false accusers;” to give loose reins to the basest lusts, as “incontinent;” to make lawsuits their practice, as “implacable;” to know nothing of loving service, as those who are “without kindness;” to make known to the enemies of the godly what they are well aware ought to be kept secret, as “traitors;” to disturb human modesty by shameless discussions, as “heady;” to understand neither what they say nor whereof they affirm,1956 as “blinded;” and to prefer carnal delights to spiritual joys, as those who are “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” For these and such like vices, whether all of them meet in a single individual, or whether some dominate in one and others in another, spring up in some form or another from this one root, when men are “lovers of their own selves.” A vice which is specially to be guarded against by those who feed Christ’s 1954 Coecati. 1955 2 Tim. iii. 1–5. 1956 1 Tim. i. 7. sheep, lest they be seeking their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ’s, and be turning those to the use of their own lusts for whom the blood of Christ was shed. Whose love ought, in one who feedeth His sheep, to grow up unto so great a spiritual fervor as to overcome even the natural fear of death, that makes us unwilling to die even when we wish to live with Christ. For the Apostle Paul also says that he had a desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ,1957 and yet he groans, being burdened, and wishes not to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life.1958 And so to His present lover the Lord said, “When thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. For this He said to him, signifying by what death he should glorify God.” “Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands,” He said; in other words, thou shalt be crucified. But that thou mayest come to this, “another shall gird thee, and carry thee,” not whither thou wouldest, but “whither thou wouldest not.” He told him first what would happen, and then how it should come to pass. For it was not after being crucified, but when actually about to be crucified, that he was carried whither he would not; for after being crucified he went his way, not whither he would not, but rather whither he would. And though when set free from the body he wished to be with Christ, yet, were it only possible, he had a desire for eternal life apart from the grievousness of death, to which grievous experience he was unwillingly carried, but from it when all was over he was willingly carried away; unwillingly he came to it, but willingly he conquered it, and left this feeling of infirmity behind that makes every one unwilling to die,—a feeling so permanently natural, that even old age itself was unable to set the blessed Peter free from its influence, even as it was said unto him, “When thou shalt be old,” thou shall be led “whither thou wouldest not.” For our consolation the Saviour Himself transfigured also the same feeling in His own person when He said, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;”1959 and He certainly had come to die without having any necessity, but only the willingness to die, with power to lay down His life, and with power to take it again. But however great be the grievousness of death, it ought to be overcome by the power of that love which is felt to Him who, being our life, was willing to endure even death in our behalf. For if there were no grievousness, even of the smallest kind, in death, the glory of the martyrs would not be so great. But if the good Shepherd, who laid down His own life for His sheep,1960 has raised up so many martyrs for Himself out of the very sheep, how much more ought those to contend to death for the truth, and even to blood against sin, who are entrusted by Him with the feeding, that is, with the teaching and governing of these very sheep? And on this account, along with the 1957 Phil. i. 23. 1958 2 Cor. v. 4. 1959 Matt. xxvi. 39. 1960 Chap. x. 18, 11. preceding example of His own passion, who can fail to see that the shepherds ought all the more to set themselves closely to imitate the Shepherd, if He was so imitated even by many of the sheep under whom, as the one Shepherd and in the one flock, the shepherds themselves are likewise sheep? For He made all those His sheep for all of whom He died, because He Himself also became a sheep that He might suffer for all.

1. It is no unimportant question why the Lord, when He manifested Himself for the third time to the disciples, said unto the Apostle Peter, “Follow me;” but of the Apostle John, “Thus I wish him to remain1961 till I come, what is that to thee?” To the discussion or solution of this question, according as the Lord shall grant us ability we devote the last discourse of this work. When the Lord, then, had announced beforehand to Peter by what death he was to glorify God, “He saith unto him, Follow me. Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; who also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that shall betray Thee? Peter, therefore, seeing him, saith to Jesus, Lord, and what of this man? Jesus saith unto him, Thus do I wish him to remain till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple dieth not: yet Jesus said not unto him, He dieth not; but, Thus do I wish him to remain till I come, what is that to thee?” You see the great extent in this Gospel of a question which, by its depth, must exercise in no ordinary way the mind of the inquirer. For why is it said to Peter, “Follow me,” and not to the others who were likewise present? Surely the disciples followed Him also as their Master. But if it is to be understood only in reference to his suffering, was Peter the only one that suffered for the truth of Christianity? Was there not present there amongst those seven, another son of Zebedee, the brother of John, who, after His ascension, is plainly recorded to have been slain by Herod? 1962 But some one may say that, as James was not crucified, it was properly enough said to Peter, “Follow me,” inasmuch as he underwent not only death, but, like Christ, even the death of the cross. Be it so, if no other explanation can be found that is more satisfactory. Why, then, was it said of John, “Thus do I wish him to remain till I come, what is that to thee?” and the words repeated, “Follow thou me,” as if that other, therefore, were not to follow, seeing He wished him to remain till He comes. Who can readily believe that anything else was meant than what the brethren who lived at the time believed, namely, that that disciple was not to die, but to abide in this life till Jesus came? But John himself removed such an idea, by giving a flat contradiction to the report that the Lord had said so. For why should he add, “Jesus saith not, He dieth not,” save to prevent what was false from taking hold of the hearts of men?

2. But let any one who so listeth still refuse his assent, and declare that what John asserts is true enough, that the Lord said not that that disciple dieth not, and yet that this is the 1961 Sic eum volo manere donec veniam. 1962 Acts xii. 2. meaning of such words as He is here recorded to have used; and further assert that the Apostle John is still living, and maintain that he is sleeping rather than lying dead in his tomb at Ephesus. Let him employ as an argument the current report that there the earth is in sensible commotion, and presents a kind of heaving appearance, and assert whether it be steadfastly or obstinately that this is occasioned by his breathing. For we cannot fail to have some who so believe, if there is no want of those also who affirm that Moses is alive; because it is written that his sepulchre could not be found,1963 and that he appeared with the Lord on the mountain along with Elias,1964 of whom we read that he did not die, but was translated.1965 As if Moses’ body could not have been hid somewhere in such a way as that its position should altogether escape discovery by men, and be raised up therefrom by divine power at the time when Elias and he were seen with Christ just as at the time of Christ’s passion many bodies of the saints arose, and after His resurrection appeared, according to Scripture, to many in the holy city.1966 But still, as I began to say, if some deny the death of Moses, whom Scripture itself, in the very passage where we read that his sepulchre could nowhere be found, explicitly declares to have died; how much more may occasion be taken from these words where the Lord says, “Thus do I wish him to stay till I come,” to believe that John is sleeping, but still alive, beneath the ground? Of whom we have also the tradition (which is found in certain apocryphal scriptures), that he was present, in good health, when he ordered a sepulchre to be made for him; and that, when it was dug and prepared with all possible care, he laid himself down there as in a bed, and became immediately defunct: yet as those think who so understand these words of the Lord, not really defunct, but only lying like one in such a condition; and, while accounted dead, was actually buried when asleep, and that he will so remain till the coming of Christ, making known meanwhile the fact of his life by the bubbling up of the dust, which is believed to be forced by the breath of the sleeper to ascend from the depths to the surface of the grave. I think it quite superfluous to contend with such an opinion. For those may see for themselves who know the locality whether the ground there does or suffers what is said regarding it, because, in truth, we too have heard of it from those who are not altogether unreliable witnesses.

3. Meanwhile let us yield to the opinion, which we are unable to refute by any certain evidence, lest we stir up still another question that may be put to us, Why the very ground should seem in a kind of way to live and breathe upon the interred corpse? But can so great a question as the one before us be settled on such grounds as these, if by a great miracle, such as can be wrought by the Almighty, the living body lies so long asleep beneath the 1963 Deut. xxxiv. 6. 1964 Matt. xvii. 3. 1965 2 Kings ii. 11. 1966 Matt. xxvii. 52, 53. ground, till the coming of the end of the world? Nay, rather, does there not arise a wider and more difficult one, why Jesus bestowed on the disciple, whom He loved beyond the others to such an extent that he was counted worthy to recline on His breast, the gift of a protracted sleep in the body, when He delivered the blessed Peter, by the eminent glory of martyrdom, from the burden of the body itself, and vouchsafed to him what the Apostle Paul said that he desired, and committed to writing, namely, “to be let loose, and to be with Christ”?1967 But if, what is rather to be believed, Saint John declared that the Lord said not, “He dieth not,” for the very purpose that no such meaning might be attached to the words which He used; and his body lieth in its sepulchre lifeless like those of others deceased; it remains, if that really takes place which report has spread abroad regarding the soil, which grows up anew, though continually carried away, that it is either so done for the purpose of commending the preciousness of his death, seeing it wants the commendation of martyrdom (for he suffered not death at a persecutor’s hand for the faith of Christ), or on some other account that is concealed from our knowledge. Still there remains the question, why the Lord said of one who was destined to die, “Thus I wish him to remain till I come.”

4. And who, besides, would not be disposed, in the case of these two apostles, Peter and John, to make this further inquiry, why the Lord loved John better, when He Himself was better loved by Peter? For wherever John has something to say of himself, in order that the reference may be understood without any mention of his name, he adds this, that Jesus loved him, as if he were the only one so loved, that he might be distinguished by this mark from the others, who were all of them certainly loved by Christ: and what else, when he so spake, did he wish to be understood but that he himself was more abundantly loved? and far be it that he should utter a falsehood. And what greater proof could Jesus have given of His own greater love to him than that this man, who was only a partner with the rest of his fellow-disciples in the great salvation, should be the only one that leaned on the breast of the Saviour Himself? And further, that the Apostle Peter loved Christ more than the others, may be adduced from many documentary evidences; but to go no further after others, it is plainly enough apparent in the lesson almost immediately preceding the present, in connection with that third manifestation of the Lord, when He put to him the question, “Lovest thou me more than these?” He knew it, of course, and yet asked, in order that we also, who read the Gospel, might know Peter’s love to Christ, both from the questions of the One and the answers of the other. But when Peter only replied, “I love Thee,” without adding, “more than these,” his answer contained all that he knew of himself. For he could not know how much He was loved by any other, not being able to look into that other’s heart. But by saying in the earliest of his answers, “Yea, Lord, Thou knowest,” he stated in clear enough terms, that it was with perfect knowledge of all that the Lord asked what He asked. The Lord 1967 Phil. i. 23. therefore knew, not only that Peter loved Him, but also that he loved Him more than the others. And yet if we propose to ourselves, in the way of inquiry, which of the two is the better, he that loveth Christ more or he that loveth Him less, who will hesitate to answer, he is the better that loveth Him more? If, on the other hand, we propose this question, which of the two is the better, he that is loved less or he that is loved more by Christ, without any doubt we shall reply that he is the better who is loved the more by Christ. In the comparison therefore which I drew first, Peter is superior to John; but in the latter, John is preferred to Peter. Accordingly, we have a third to propose in this form: Which of the two disciples is the better, he that loveth Christ less than his fellow-disciple does, and is loved more than his fellow-disciple by Christ? or he who is loved less than his fellow-disciple by Christ, while he, more than his fellow-disciple, loveth Christ? Here it is that the answer plainly halts, and the question grows in magnitude. As far, however, as my own wisdom goes, I might easily reply, that he is the better who loveth Christ the more, but he the happier who is loved the more by Christ; if only I could thoroughly see how to defend the justice of our Deliverer in loving him the less by whom He is loved the more, and him the more by whom He is loved the less.

5. I shall therefore, in the manifested mercy of Him whose justice is hidden, set about the discussion, in order to the solution of a question of such importance, in accordance with the strength which He may graciously bestow: for hitherto it has only been proposed, not expounded. Let this, then, be the commencement of its exposition, namely, that we bear in mind that in this corruptible body, which burdens the soul,1968 we live a miserable life. But we who are now redeemed by the Mediator, and have received the earnest of the Holy Spirit, have a blessed life in prospect, although we possess it not as yet in reality. But a hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.1969 And it is in the evils that every one suffers, not in the good things that he enjoys, that he has need of patience. The present life, therefore, whereof it is written, “Is not the life of man a term of trial upon earth?”1970 in which we are daily crying to the Lord, “Deliver us from evil,”1971 a man is compelled to endure, even when his sins are forgiven him, although it was the first sin that caused his falling into such misery. For the penalty is more protracted than the fault; lest the fault should be accounted small, were the penalty to end with itself. On this account it is also, either for the demonstration of our debt of misery, or for the amendment of our passing life, or for the exercise of the necessary patience, that man is kept through time in the penalty, 1968 Wisd. ix. 15. 1969 Rom. viii. 24, 25. 1970 Job vii. 1. 1971 Matt. vi. 13. even when he is no longer held by his sin as liable to everlasting damnation. This is the truly lamentable but unblameable condition of the present evil days we pass in this mortal state, even while in it we look with loving eyes to the days that are good. For it comes from the righteous anger of God, whereof the Scriptures say, “Man, that is born of woman, is of few days and full of anger:”1972 for the anger of God is not like that of man, the disturbance of an excited man, but the calm fixing of righteous punishment. In this anger of His, God restraineth not, as it is written, His tender mercies;1973 but, besides other consolations to the miserable, which He ceaseth not to bestow on mankind, in the fullness of time, when He knew that such had to be done, He sent His only-begotten Son,1974 by whom He created all things, that He might become man while remaining God, and so be the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus:1975 that those who believe in Him, being absolved by the laver of regeneration from the guilt of all their sins,—to wit, both of the original sin they have inherited by generation, and to meet which, in particular, regeneration was instituted, and of all others contracted by evil conduct,—might be delivered from perpetual condemnation, and live in faith and hope and love while sojourning in this world, and be walking onward to His visible presence amid its toilsome and perilous temptations on the one hand, but the consolations of God, both bodily and spiritual, on the other, ever keeping to the way which Christ has become to them. And because, even while walking in Him, they are not exempt from sins, which creep in through the infirmities of this life, He has given them the salutary remedies of alms whereby their prayers might be aided when He taught them to say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” 1976 So does the Church act in blessed hope through this troublous life; and this Church symbolized in its generality, was personified in the Apostle Peter, on account of the primacy of his apostleship. For, as regards his proper personality, he was by nature one man, by grace one Christian, by still more abounding grace one, and yet also, the first apostle; but when it was said to him, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven,” he represented the universal Church, which in this world is shaken by divers temptations, that come upon it like torrents of rain, floods and tempests, and falleth not, because it is founded upon a rock (petra), from which Peter received his name. For petra (rock) is not derived from Peter, but Peter from petra; just as Christ is not called so from the Christian, but the Christian from Christ. For on this very account the Lord said, “On this rock will I 1972 Job xiv. 1. 1973 Ps. lxxvii. 9. 1974 Gal. iv. 4. 1975 1 Tim. ii. 5. 1976 Matt. vi. 12. build my Church,” because Peter had said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”1977 On this rock, therefore, He said, which thou hast confessed, I will build my Church. For the Rock (Petra) was Christ;1978 and on this foundation was Peter himself also built. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.1979 The Church, therefore, which is founded in Christ received from Him the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the person of Peter, that is to say, the power of binding and loosing sins. For what the Church is essentially in Christ, such representatively is Peter in the rock (petra); and in this representation Christ is to be understood as the Rock, Peter as the Church. This Church, accordingly, which Peter represented, so long as it lives amidst evil, by loving and following Christ is delivered from evil. But its following is the closer in those who contend even unto death for the truth. But to the universality1980 of the Church is it said, “Follow me,” even as it was for the same universality that Christ suffered: of whom this same Peter saith, “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow His footsteps.”1981 This, then, you see is why it was said to him, “Follow me.” But there is another, an immortal life, that is not in the midst of evil: there we shall see face to face what is seen here through a glass and in a riddle,1982 even when much progress is made in the beholding of the truth. There are two states of life, therefore, preached and commended to herself from heaven, that are known to the Church, whereof the one is in faith, the other in sight; one in the temporal sojourn in a foreign land, the other in the eternity of the heavenly abode; one in labor, the other in repose; one on the way, the other in the fatherland; one in active work, the other in the wages of contemplation; one declines from evil and makes for good, the other has no evil to decline from, and has great good to enjoy; the one fights with a foe, the other reigns without a foe; the one is brave in the midst of adversities, the other has no experience of adversity; the one is bridling its carnal lusts, the other has full scope for spiritual delights; the one is anxious with the care of conquering, the other secure in the peace of victory; the one is helped in temptations, the other, free from all temptations, rejoices in the Helper Himself; the one is occupied in relieving the indigent, the other is there, where no indigence is found; the one pardons the sins of others, that its own may be pardoned to itself, the other neither has anything to pardon nor does aught for which pardon has to be asked; the one is scourged with evils that it may not be elated with good things, the other is free from all evil by such a fullness of grace that, without any temptation to pride, it may cleave to that 1977 Matt. xvi. 16–19. 1978 1 Cor. x. 4. 1979 1 Cor. iii. 11. 1980 Universitati. 1981 1 Pet. ii. 21. 1982 1 Cor. xiii. 12. which is supremely good; the one discerneth both good and evil, the other has only that which is good presented to view: therefore the one is good, but miserable as yet; the other, better and blessed. This one was signified by the Apostle Peter, that other by John. The whole of the one is passed here to the end of this world, and there finds its termination, the other is deferred for its completion till after the end of this world, but has no end in the world to come. Hence it is said to the latter, “Follow me;” but of the former, “Thus I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.” For what means this last? So far as my wisdom goes, so far as I comprehend, what is it but this, Follow thou me by imitating me in the endurance of temporal evils; let him remain till I come to restore everlasting good? And this may be expressed more clearly in this way: Let perfected action, informed by the example of my passion, follow me; but let contemplation only begun remain so till I come, to be perfected when I come. For the godly plenitude of patience, reaching forward even unto death, followeth Christ; but the fullness of knowledge tarrieth till Christ come, to be manifested then. For here the evils of this world are endured in the land of the dying, while there shall be seen the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. For in saying, “I wish him to tarry till I come,” we are not to understand Him as meaning to remain on, or abide permanently, but to wait; seeing that what is signified by him shall certainly not be fulfilled now, but when Christ is come. But what is signified by him to whom it was said, “Follow thou me,” unless it be done now, will never attain to the expected end. And in this life of activity, the more we love Christ the more easily are we delivered from evil. But He loveth us less as we now are, and therefore delivers from it, that we may not be always such as we are. There, however, He loveth us more; for we shall not have aught about us to displease Him, or aught that He will have to separate us from: nor is it for aught else that He loveth us here but that He may heal and translate us from everything He loveth not. Here, therefore, He loveth us less, where He would not have us remain; there in larger measure, whither He would have us to be passing, and out of that wherein He would not that we should perish. Let Peter therefore love Him, that we may obtain deliverance from our present mortality; let John be loved by Him, that we may be preserved in the immortality to come. 6. But by this line of argument we have shown why Christ loved John more than Peter, not why Peter loved Christ more than John. For if Christ loveth us more in the world to come, where we shall live unendingly with Him, than in the present, from which we are in the course of being rescued, that we may be always in the other, it does not follow on that account that we shall love Him less when better ourselves; since we can in no possible way be better ourselves, save by loving Him more. Why was it, then, that John loved Him less than Peter, if he signified that life, wherein He must be more abundantly loved, but because on that very account it was said, “I will that he tarry,” that is wait, “till I come;” for we have not yet the love itself, which will then be greater far, but are expecting that future, that we may have it when He shall come? Just as in his own epistle the same apostle declares, “It has not yet appeared what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”1983 Then accordingly shall we love the more that which we shall see. But the Lord Himself, in His predestinating knowledge, loveth more that future life of ours that is yet to come, such as He knows it will be hereafter in us, in order that by so loving us He may draw us onward to its possession. Wherefore, as all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth,1984 we know our present misery, because we feel it; and therefore we love more the mercy of the Lord, which we wish to be exhibited in our deliverance from misery, and we ask and experience it daily, especially in the remission of sins: this it is that was signified by Peter, as loving more, but less beloved; because Christ loveth us less in our misery than in our blessedness. But the contemplation of the truth, such as it then shall be, we love less, because as yet we neither know nor possess it: this was signified by John as loving less, and therefore waiting both for that state itself, and for the perfecting in us of that love to Him, to which He is entitled, till the Lord come; but loved the more, because that it is, which is symbolized by him, that maketh him blessed.

7. Let no one, however, separate these distinguished apostles. In that which was signified by Peter, they were both alike; and in that which was signified by John, they will both be alike hereafter. In their representative character, the one was following, the other tarrying; but in their personal faith they were both of them enduring the present evils of the misery here, both of them expecting the future good things of the blessedness to come. And such is the case, not with them alone, but with the holy universal Church, the spouse of Christ, who has still to be rescued from the present trials, and to be preserved in the future happiness. And these two states of life were symbolized by Peter and John, the one by the one, the other by the other; but in this life they both of them walked for a time by faith, and the other they shall both of them enjoy eternally by sight. For the whole body of the saints, therefore, inseparably belonging to the body of Christ, and for their safe pilotage through the present tempestuous life, did Peter, the first of the apostles, receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven for the binding and loosing of sins; and for the same congregation of saints, in reference to the perfect repose in the bosom of that mysterious life to come did the evangelist John recline on the breast of Christ. For it is not the former alone but the whole Church, that bindeth and looseth sins; nor did the latter alone drink at the fountain of the Lord’s breast, to emit again in preaching, of the Word in the beginning, God with God, and those other sublime truths regarding the divinity of Christ, and the Trinity and Unity of the whole Godhead. which are to be yet beheld in that kingdom face to face, but meanwhile till the Lord’s coming are only to be seen in a mirror and in a riddle; but the Lord has Himself diffused this very gospel through the whole world, that every one of His 1983 1 John iii. 2. 1984 Ps. xxv. 10. own may drink thereat according to his own individual capacity. There are some who have entertained the idea—and those, too, who are no contemptible handlers of sacred eloquence— that the Apostle John was more loved by Christ on the ground that he never married a wife, and lived in perfect chastity from early boyhood.1985 There is, indeed, no distinct evidence of this in the canonical Scriptures: nevertheless it is an idea that contributes not a little to the suitableness of the opinion expressed above, namely, that that life was signified by him, where there will be no marriage.

8. “This is the disciple who testifieth of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also,” he adds, “many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” We are not to suppose that in regard to local space the world would be unable to contain them; for how could they be written in it if it could not bear them when written? but perhaps it is that they could not be comprehended by the capacity of the readers: although, while our faith in certain things themselves remains unharmed, the words we use about them may not unfrequently appear to exceed belief. This will not take place when anything that was obscure or dubious is in course of exposition by the setting forth of its ground and reason, but only when that which is clear of itself is either magnified or extenuated, without any real departure from the pathway of the truth to be intimated; for the words may outrun the thing itself that is indicated only in such a way, that the will of him that speaketh, but without any intention to deceive, may be apparent, so that, knowing how far he will be believed, he, orally, either diminishes or magnifies his subject beyond the limit to which credit will be given. This mode of speaking is called by the Greek name hyperbole, by the masters not only of Greek, but also of Latin literature. And this mode is found not only here, but in several other parts also of the divine literature: as, “They set their mouths against the heavens;”1986 and, “The top of the hair of such as go on in their trespasses;”1987 and many others of the same kind, which are no more wanting in the sacred Scriptures than other tropes or modes of speaking. Of these I might give a more elaborate discussion, were it not that, as the evangelist here terminates his Gospel, I am also compelled to bring my discourse to a close.