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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 spoke 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 reigned 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." 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, the assurance, of things
not seen." Accordingly, if faith is in things that are believed,
and that, too, in things which are not seen, 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 I 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 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 impaired by His death, and was
now repaired 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." 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."
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." 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." 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 the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom
of the Son of His love." 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;" 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
I which was disallowed him, and with which the Son of God was
endowed by nature, and not by robbery.
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