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."' 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.^ 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 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 evangeUst says, " He gave them power to become the sons of God," ^ 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:"'* 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 I Chap. vii. 16. - Tract. XXIX., haberet a quo esset.
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 coequal 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 Hinj 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 coequal. 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 viissi [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. ^ An apostle might say, He that receiveth me, receiveth Him 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." * 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 5 Rom. iv. 5.
6 Matt. X. 40.
Tr.ACTATE LIV.]
the servant. But the only-begotten Son could rightly say, " Believe on God, and believe on me; " ' 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: '' = 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, maybe 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 ' Chap. xiv. I.
2 Matt. V. 14-16.
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; " ' namely, that thereby we are to understand. 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." •* 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. ''^ 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 wlion^ we have spoken on former occasions, and of these, not with all, but such only whose memories ' Chap. V. 22.
4 Ps. <-i. I.
• Rom.
[Tractate LIV.
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 onlybegotten 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 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 ha^: 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."' 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 I Chap. V. 26.1) 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 tiiis, 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 One - what the latter thus spake as the Truth. The Truthful begat the Truth. What, then, could He now say to the 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 2 Verax.
Tractate LV.} heard the Father telUiig 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.
TRACTATE LV Chapter XHI. 1-5.
I. 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 paschcin 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;' because the pascha was then celeiDrated for the first time by God's people, when, in their flight from Egypt, \.\\Qy passed over the Red Sea.= And now that prophetic emblem is fulfilled in truth, when Christ is led as a sheep to the slaughter, ^ 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; "• and a most salutary transit we make when we pass over from the devil to Christ, and from this unstable world to His wellestablished 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." 5 This name, then, of pascha, which, as I have said, is in Latin c;alled traii- 1 Transitu^, transit, pass over. — Tr.
2 Ex. xiv. 29. A curious mistake of Autfustin's to derive the name of the feast from XsrixvX^ />iissiiie; 07'ir the Ked Sea, instead of ]i.ho\M ■A passing: over the houses of the IsraeUtes, when He smote the firstborn of Egypt! Compare Ex. xii. 11,13,33,37. — Tr.
3 Isa. hii. 7.
4 \l .X. xn. 23.
5 Col. i. 13.
si'fus (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 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 tiie kingdom, but in the sea to destruction.
2. " Wlien 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.'' Li order, doubtless, that they also, through that love of His, might pass from this world where they now were, to their Hend who had passed hence before them. For what mean these words, "to the end," but just to Christ? " For C'hrist is the end of the law," says the apostle, " for righteousness to every one that believeth." * The end that consummates, not that consumes; the end whereto we attain, not wiierein we perish. Exactly thus are we to uiulerstantl tlie passage, " Christ our passover is sacrificed."' He is our end; into Hini do wc pass. For I see that these gosjiel words may also be taken in a kind of human sense, that Ch'rist loved His own even unto death, so tliat tliis may bo the meaning of " He loved them unto tlie end." This meaning is 6 Rom. X. 4.
Cor. V. 7.
[Tractate LV.
human, not divine: ' 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;^ 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. "^ 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,'* 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 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 wicked- ' That is, "applies to Christ's humanity, not His divinity." — Tr.
4 C(Ena facta: hti-nvov yevofievov. See Augustin's explanation below. — Tr.
ness in heavenly places, against which he testifies that we have to maintain a struggle; ^ 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 sucn 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 net 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. Knowirig, then, these things, " He riseth from supper, and layetli 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 about to speak of the pre-eminent 5 Eph. vi. 12.
Tractate I, VI. J