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Faith unites, spiritual understanding quickens.

v. 64.

HOMIL. 7. But there be some, saith He, among you that believe not. XXVII. He said not, There be some among you that understand not, but He hath told the reason why they understand not. For

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there be some among you that believe not, and understand not, only because they believe not. Thus the Prophet hath Isa. 7, said, Except ye believe, ye shall not understand. By faith LXX. we are knit, by understanding are quickened. First let us cleave to Him by faith, that there may be what may be quickened by understanding. For he that cleaveth not, resisteth; he that resisteth, believeth not. Now he that resisteth, how should he be quickened? He is an adversary to the ray of light by which he should be penetrated: it is not that he turns away his eye-sight, but that he shuts his mind. There be, then, some that believe not. Let them believe and open, let them open and they shall be enlightened. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed, and who it was that should betray Him. For Judas too was there. There were some offended: but he remained, to plot treachery, not to understand. And because that was the cause of his remaining, the Lord held not His peace concerning him. He spoke not of him expressly, but neither did He leave him unspoken of; that all might fear, albeit only one should perish. But after He had spoken, and distinguished them that believe from them that believe not, He expressed the cause why they believe not: Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto Me, unless it be given him of My Father. Consequently, even to believe is a thing given unto us: think not that it is nothing to believe. But if to believe be a great thing, rejoice that thou 1 Cor. hast believed, only be not lifted up: for what hast thou that thou didst not receive?

v. 65.

4, 7.

v. 66.

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 upon a time the Lord Christ called Peter, Satan, rather because he wanted to go before his Lord, and to give counsel that He should not die, He Who was come to die that we might not die eternally; and He said to him, Mat.16, Get thee behind Me, Satan; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of man. He did not drive him back, to go after Satan, and therefore called him, Satan; but He made him go behind Himself, that by walking after the

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To go back from Christ, is to follow Satan.

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67, 68.

Lord he might not be a Satan. But these went back in the JOHN same sense as the Apostle saith of certain women: For some are turned back after Satan. Further with Him they walked 1 Tim.5, not. Lo, cut off from the Body, they have lost life; because, 15. haply, they were not in the Body. Among them that believe not must even they be reckoned, for all that they were called disciples. They went back, not a few, but many. It may be that this came to pass for our consolation. For it sometimes happens that a man may say a true thing, and that what he saith is not apprehended, and that they who hear it are offended and go away. Now the man repents him that he said what is true: for, saith the man to himself, I ought not so to have said it, not this ought I to have said. Lo, it happened to the Lord; He spoke, and lost many, remained for few. But He was not troubled, because from the beginning He knew both who they were that believe, and who that believe not: we, if it happen to us, are greatly troubled. Let us find comfort in the Lord, and yet let us speak words with caution.

rum te

9. And He turned to the few that remained: Then said v. 67. Jesus unto the twelve; i. e. to those twelve that remained: Will ye also, said He, go away? Judas, he too departed. not: but why he remained, was already apparent to the Lord; to us he is afterwards made manifest. Peter answered for them all, one for many, unity for universality: Then Simon v. 68. Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou drivest us from Thee, give us Thy second self'. To whom' alteshall we go? If we quit Thee, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. See how Peter, by the gift of God, by the new creation of the Holy Spirit, understood Him. Whence, except 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, have believed and known. For we believed that we might know: since if we would fain know first and then believe, we should be able neither to know, nor to believe. What have we believed, and what known? That Thou art Christ, the Son of God; that is, that this Eternal Life is none other than Thou, and that Thou givest in Thy flesh and blood none other than what Thou art.

v. 70.

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The wicked, as Judas, God's instruments for good. HOMIL. 10. The Lord Jesus said therefore, Have not I chosen you XXVII. twelve, and one of you is a devil? Should He then have said, "Have chosen eleven," or is a devil also chosen, is a devil among the elect? Persons are wont to be called elect as a term of praise: or is it so, that this man also is elect, from whom, unwilling and unwitting, some great good was to be effected? This is proper to God; it is the contrary to what the wicked do. For as wicked men make a bad use of the good works of God, so contrariwise God maketh a good use of the bad works of wicked men. How good it is, for the members of the body to be in such wise as they can be dis posed only by God their Artificer! Yet what an evil use doth wantonness make of the eyes! What an evil use, deceit, of the tongue! A false witness, doth he not by his tongue both first murder his own soul, and then essay to hurt another, when he hath undone himself? He maketh an evil use of the tongue: but the tongue is not therefore an evil thing the tongue is the work of God, but that wickedness maketh an evil use of that good work of God. What an use make they of their feet who run to crimes! what an use, murderers, of their hands! And those good creatures of God which are outward, within their reach, how badly do bad men use them! By gold they corrupt judgment, oppress the innocent. The light of day, bad men turn to bad use: for by bad living they abuse the very light they see by, to be an help to their wicked deeds. When a bad man is going to do some bad thing, he wishes the light to shine for him that he may not stumble; he, who within hath already stumbled and fallen! The hurt he fears in the body, he hath already incurred in the heart! Well, all the good gifts of God, that I may not be tedious in enumerating them severally, a bad man turns to bad use: on the other hand, the evils of evil men he that is good turns to a good use. And what so good as the One God? For the Lord Himself hath Mark said, None is good, but the One God. The better He is, the 10, 18. better use He maketh even of our evil things. What worse than Judas? Among all that cleaved to the Master, among the twelve, the bag was committed to him, the dispensing to the poor was allotted to him: ungrateful for so great a benefit, so great an honour, he received the money, lost righ

The devil raises persecution against the Saints:

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teousness: betrayed the Life, himself dead: Whom as a JoHN disciple he followed, Him as an enemy he persecuted! All this evil was Judas's; but his evil, the Lord turned to good use. He bore to be betrayed, that He might redeem us. Lo, the evil of Judas is turned to good. How many martyrs hath Satan persecuted! Had Satan ceased from persecuting, we should not to-day be celebrating that so glorious crown of Saint Laurentius. Then if God turneth to good use the evil works of the devil himself; what the bad doeth by making a bad use, he doth to his own hurt, not contradicteth Op. imthe goodness of God. The Artificer putteth him to use;! perf. c. and the great Artificer, if He knew not how to put him to 5, 60. use, neither would He have permitted him to be. Therefore, one of you is a devil, saith He, albeit I have chosen you twelve. What He saith, I have chosen twelve, may also be understood in this way, that it is an hallowed number. For it does not follow that, because one thereof was lost, the number hath lost its honour: into the stead of the lost, Acts 1, another is chosen in. It remained, that consecrated number, 26. twelve: because throughout the whole world, that is, throughout the four quarters of the world, they were to bear tidings of the Trinity. That is the reason of the three times four. Judas, then, did but exterminate himself, not mar the number twelve: it was but that he forsook the Teacher, for God put in one who should take his place.

11. All this, that the Lord spake concerning His flesh. and blood, and how in the grace of that distribution He promised unto us eternal life, and how He would have us to understand who are they that eat His flesh and drink His blood, by this, namely, that they dwell in Him and He in them, and how they which believed not understood not, and how by taking spiritual things in a fleshly sense, they were offended, and how though they were offended and perished, the Lord was present for comfort of His disciples which remained, to prove whom He asked, Will ye also go? in order that the answer of their remaining stedfast might be known unto us, for He knew that they did remain; let all this, I say, hereunto avail us, my dearly beloved, that we eat not the flesh and blood of Christ only in the Sacrament, which thing do also many evil men, but that even unto

2, 19.

424 And God is glorified by their constancy unto death:

HOMIL. participation of the Spirit we do eat and drink, that in the XXVII Lord's body we abide as members, that with His Spirit we be quickened, and be not offended, yea though many in this present time do together with us eat and drink temporally the Sacraments, who shall have in the end eternal torments. For, at the present, the Body of Christ is mixed, as in the 2 Tim. threshing-floor; but the Lord knoweth who be His. If thou knowest what thou threshest, that in it is the latent substance, and the threshing consumeth not what the winnowing shall purge, we are sure, my brethren, that all we who are in the Body of the Lord, and dwell in Him that He also may dwell in us, must needs in this world even unto the end live among evil men. I say not, among those evil men who blaspheme Christ: for there be rarely now found who blaspheme with the tongue : but many, who do so in their life. Need then it is that among them we live even unto the end.

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12. But what is it that He saith, He that abideth in Me, and I in him? What, but that which was spoken unto the Mat. 24, martyrs, He that shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved? How abode in Him that Saint Laurentius, whose feast we this day celebrate? He abode, even unto temptation, abode even unto the tyrant's questioning, abode even unto fiercest threatening, abode even unto destruction: nay, that is too little even unto savage torture, he abode. For he was not killed by a speedy death, but was tortured over the fire: he was kept long in life; nay, not kept long in life, but forced to be long in dying. Therefore, in that lingering death, in those torments, he, because he had well eaten and well drunk, as one filled with that meat, and inebriated with that chalice, felt not the torments. For He was there, Who said, It is the Spirit that quickeneth. The flesh burned, but the Spirit enlivened the soul. He shrunk not, and he entered into the kingdom. Xystus the holy martyr, whose day we celebrated five days since, had said to him, "Mourn not, my son." He was a bishop, the other his deacon. "Mourn not," said he : "thou shalt follow me after three days." By three days, he meant the intermediate time between the day of the passion of Saint Xystus, and the present day, which is that of the passion of Saint Laurentius.