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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 spoke, 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 lit 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 spoke 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."
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 spoke, 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
for every one of their sins, but for this sin of not believing on
Christ, inasmuch as He came not and spoke 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 spoke 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 spoke, "He that receiveth you, receiveth
me;" and, "He that despiseth you, despiseth me." "Or would
ye," says the Apostle Paul, "have a proof of Him that speaketh in
me, namely Christ."
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." 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; 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, if they find not salvation in
that Saviour who came to seek that which was lost, 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 spoke, 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 judgments 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.
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