Liber retractationis in Actus Apostolorum, cum praefatione

BOOK OF RETRACTATION ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

THE BOOK BEGINS.

PREFACE.

We know that the eminent doctor and bishop Augustine, when he was older, made books of Retractations on certain of his little works which he had composed as a young man, so that what he had learned better with time, from the frequent practice of reading and by the gift of the heavenly bounty, he might set down in written records and leave to posterity to be read, not as one put to shame by his former inexperience, but rather as one rejoicing in his own progress. His diligence it has pleased us too to imitate according to our small measure, so that after the exposition of the Acts of the Apostles, which many years ago, at the request of the venerable bishop Acca, we wrote with what skill we could, we now compose on the same volume a short book of Retractation, with the chief aim either of adding what was too little said, or of emending what seemed to have been said otherwise than was fitting. In it we have also taken care to mention briefly certain things which we saw set down in the Greek either differently, or with more or less. Whether these were omitted or differently expressed through the negligence of the translator, or were corrupted or left out through the carelessness of the copyists, we have not yet been able to learn. For I do not dare to suspect that the Greek exemplar was falsified; hence I admonish the reader that wherever we have done this, he should read it for the sake of learning, yet not insert it into his own volume as though to emend it, unless perhaps he has found these things so translated of old in a Latin codex of his own version. For Jerome too sets out very many testimonies of the Old Instrument as the Hebrew truth has them; and yet he did not wish either to translate them so himself in our codices, or us to emend them. For example: I shall not look upon man any more, and the inhabitant; my generation has ceased (Isa. 38:11–12). And: His sepulchre shall be glorious (Isa. 11:10); and: From the ends of the earth we have heard praises (Isa. 24:16); and: Whoever kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold (Gen. 4:15): he says that the Hebrew has: He shall pay seven vengeances; and: From the wings of the earth; and: His rest shall be glorious; and: The inhabitant of rest; my generation is taken away; and these he wished the reader to know are so read among the Hebrews, for the sake of learning only, but not for emending.

CHAPTER ONE.

The first account indeed I made concerning all things, O Theophilus, which Jesus began to do and to teach. When he says: The first indeed, it is not an adverb of order, as in that saying of the Apostle: First indeed I give thanks to my God (Rom. 1:8); but, as is very easily seen from the Greek, the noun "first" is to be joined to what follows, "account", so that the sense is that he made a first account about Jesus by writing the Gospel, and is now about to make a second by adding the Acts of the Apostles. And indeed he completes the mention of the first account when he adds: Until the day on which, giving commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen, He was taken up; and then he made the beginning of the second account when he continues: To whom also He showed Himself alive after His passion by many proofs through forty days, etc. For although in the Gospel he testified that He ascended into the heavens, and that the disciples returned from Bethany to Jerusalem, yet he did not say there that for forty days after His passion He appeared to them often, that they questioned Him, as He was about to ascend, about the kingdom of Israel, that as He went up to heaven angels stood by them, who foretold that He would return in like manner, and other things of this kind.

For John indeed baptized with water, you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Baptisma in Greek is called tinctio, "dipping", in Latin. Hence too in certain codices we have found it translated thus: For John indeed dipped in water, but you shall be dipped in the Holy Spirit. Here there is a wonderful concord between the words of the Lord and of His forerunner. For the latter said of the Lord to those whom he was baptizing: I have baptized you with water, but He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8). And the Lord Himself: John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. This too is to be noted, that the baptism of the Lord in the Holy Spirit, which John had foretold, does not look only to that time when the apostles and the other faithful of that time were baptized with water for the remission of sins, through the grace of the Holy Spirit granted to them by the Lord; but also to this, when, the Lord Himself sending them, they received more fully the gifts of the same Spirit from heaven. But now too whoever

receive baptism for the remission of sins are surely baptized in the Holy Spirit, by Whose gift they are both washed from all sins and helped so that they may advance in good deeds.

Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Not "the kingdom of Israel", but "to Israel"; as is also plain in the Greek, where τῷ Israel, and not οῦ Israel, is written. This would be understood more easily if, with one word added, it were said: Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to the people of Israel.

While they were gazing at Him going into heaven. In the Greek it reads thus: And while they were looking intently into heaven as He was going; that is, that they were looking intently into heaven, whither He was going. Hence the angels also say to them: Why do you stand looking into heaven? But that they were also gazing at Him Who was going into heaven is shown by the angels' following word, when it is said: He shall come in the same way as you have seen Him going into heaven.

And when they had entered the upper room, they went up where they had their lodging. For in the Greek too the order of the words is set thus: And when they had entered into the upper room, they went up where they were staying, Peter and John, and Andrew, and James. In the Greek the order of the names is thus: Peter and Andrew, and James and John, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas of James. The histories which contain the passions of the apostles, and which are reckoned apocryphal by very many, relate that these preached in Persia, and that there, slain by the priests of the temples in the city of Suanir, they underwent a glorious martyrdom. With them agrees also the book of the Martyrology which is entitled with the name and preface of blessed Jerome, although that same Jerome is said to have been not the author of that book but its translator, while Eusebius was its author. Isidore, moreover, judges that this Simon is the one who after James the brother of the Lord ruled the Church of Jerusalem, and under Trajan was crowned with the martyrdom of the cross when he was a hundred and twenty years old; and we too once followed him in the first book on the Acts of the Apostles, not examining too scrupulously what he wrote, but simply listening to his words, thinking that he had learned these things from reliable histories of the ancients. This indeed we do not dare to deny even now, especially since he who wrote the aforesaid passions of the apostles has himself most certainly betrayed that he wrote things uncertain and false. For he says that the eunuch of Candace, whom Philip had baptized in Judaea, was in Ethiopia at the time when Matthew was teaching there, and brought help to him as he taught; whereas it is plain that Candace is the name not of a man but of a woman, that is, not of the eunuch but of his mistress, namely the queen of the Ethiopians, all of whom, as we learn from the records of the ancients, used of old to be so called. I wrote in the same work, following Jerome's commentary, about Judas the brother of James also, who was also called Thaddaeus, that he had been sent to Abgar, king of Osroene, as ecclesiastical history had handed down; but afterwards, looking more carefully into that ecclesiastical history itself, I found that it is not written there that Thaddaeus the apostle, one of the twelve, but Thaddaeus, one of the seventy disciples

was dispatched to heal the king mentioned. But I do not think the error should be imputed to me, where, following the authority of great doctors, I believed that what I found in their little works was to be accepted without scruple.

With the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and His brothers. He means the brothers of Jesus, not of Mary. For in the Greek the distinction is plain, where not αὐτῆς but αὐτοῦ is written, which among them is without any doubt a pronoun of the masculine gender. For blessed Luke took care to make known to his readers that the Lord's brothers were at that time sharers in His faith, of whom it had been said before His passion: For neither did His brothers believe in Him.

And it became known to all who dwelt in Jerusalem, so that that field was called in their tongue Haceldama. He says "in the tongue of those who dwelt in Jerusalem", because, although both spoke Hebrew, the particular character of the speech of the people of Jerusalem nonetheless differed from that of the Galileans, from among whom the apostles were; as we learn in the history of the Lord's passion, where that same Peter, even against his will, was betrayed by his speech as a Galilean.

And they put forward two, Joseph who was called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus. In the Greek there is more: And when these things had been said, they put forward two: Joseph, who was called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. Where we read Justus in this sentence, Justus is set in the Greek itself too. If we believe it to be a Latin name, it seems that that man was of such great virtue that he received the name of justice even from the Romans who had been able to know him. But if it is a Hebrew name, it can be interpreted "sparing", or "himself lifted up", as Jerome teaches in the book of Hebrew names. What in Latin is called Justus is in Hebrew called Sadoch, in Greek δίκαιος. Clement, priest of Alexandria, a man most learned in all things, relates that both of these who were put forward for the lot of the apostolate were of the number of the seventy disciples.

CHAPTER II.

And when the days of Pentecost were being fulfilled, they were all together in the same place. Some codices wrongly have "Pentecosten". For Pentecoste in the nominative case is said for quinquagesima, "the fiftieth"; Pentecostes in the genitive, quinquagesimae; Pentecosten in the accusative, quinquagesimam. No rule of speech allows us to say Pentecosten, since it ought to be said: When the day of the fiftieth was being fulfilled; or at any rate, as is read in the Greek in the singular number: And when the days of the fiftieth were being fulfilled. But in the prayers of that same day one must say: And celebrating the most holy day of Pentecost [Pentecosten], that is, the fiftieth. From the habit of this word it is thought by some who do not know the Greek language that the solemnity of this day ought to be called Pentecosten even in the nominative case.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a violent wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting, etc. In the very giving of the law and of grace there appears a most evident difference between the old and the new testament.

There the people stood far off; there was fear, there was no love. For they were so greatly afraid that they said to Moses: Speak to us yourself, and let not the Lord speak to us, lest we die (Exod. 20:19). God therefore came down, as it is written, upon Sinai in fire, but terrifying the people standing far off, He wrote the law with His finger on stone, not with His Spirit on the heart. Here, however, when the Holy Spirit came, the faithful were gathered together in one; and He did not terrify on a mountain, but entered a house. From heaven indeed there came a sound suddenly, and it sounded as though a violent blast were borne along; but no one was afraid. You have heard the sound; see the fire, for on the mountain too both were present, both fire and sound, but there was smoke there too, here fire, tongues divided as of fire. Was He terrifying from afar? Far from it. For it sat upon each one of them, and they began to speak in tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them to utter. Hear the tongue speaking, and understand the Spirit writing not on stone but on the heart.

And there appeared to them parted tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them, etc. "Of fire", not "fire". For in the Greek πυρὸς is found, not πῦρ. This distinction would be clearer if, with a word added, it were said: There appeared parted tongues as of burning fire, or as of shining fire, so that it may be understood that the tongues were divided in the likeness of fire.

And they began to speak in various tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them to speak. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation, etc. In the Greek, in this place, it does not have "in various tongues" but "in other tongues". For Isaiah had said: In other tongues and with other lips I will speak to this people, and not even so will they hear Me, says the Lord. And blessed Luke, to point out that this prophecy was fulfilled by this giving of the Spirit, took care to set in this sacred history the very word that he saw in the prophecy.

Because each one heard them speaking in his own tongue. And they were all amazed and wondered, saying: Behold, are not all these who are speaking Galileans, etc.? I know that I have been blamed by some for saying that this sentence can be understood in two ways, or rather for asking how it is to be understood. To them I answer briefly that whatever I wrote about this same sentence in my preceding volume I did not put forward from my own understanding, but took from the words of a holy master, blameless in all things, that is, Gregory Nazianzen. And indeed it is certain that the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke in all tongues, nor may any of the faithful doubt this. But how they spoke is rightly asked: namely, whether the speech of the apostles had such power that, when heard, it could be understood equally by all who knew different languages, or whether whichever of them was speaking (for it was necessary in a gathering of so great a multitude that one should for the time deliver the discourse of teaching while the rest were silent), he who was speaking made his discourse first to the Hebrews in Hebrew, the others not knowing what he said; then to the Greeks in Greek, the others not understanding and waiting.

then to the Parthians, after that to the Medes, and so to the Elamites and to the nations which are listed in order, he spoke in their own proper tongue, each waiting in silence until, when his turn came, they understood what was being said, and so gave the assent of faith to the words of those who taught. Now Luke relates that Peter spoke to the crowds, and does not relate that he repeated a second or third time the same things he had said, but only that they, having received the counsel of salvation, were consecrated with the mysteries of the Christian faith. But I do not think that a man errs if he believes that both could happen: namely, that the apostles in the Holy Spirit were able to understand and to speak the tongues of all nations, and also that by a greater miracle their words, in whatever tongue they were uttered, could be understood equally by all who heard.

And those who dwell in Mesopotamia, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia. These provinces which are named after Judaea do indeed all speak Greek; but if they sounded nothing different by the custom of their homelands, they would by no means be mentioned with so fine a distinction of tongues. Hence the wonderful grace of the Spirit in the apostles is to be beheld, which not only taught them the diversity of all tongues, but also caused the difference of particular usages within each tongue, according to the number of provinces which used it, to be recognized in their speech.

And strangers of Rome. In the Greek it would more correctly be had as: And sojourners of Rome, that is, Jews who were leading a sojourner's life at Rome, as others did elsewhere, of whom it was spoken above. For that there were incomers there, who in Greek are called proselytes, that is, those who had come over from the gentiles to Judaism, leaving the rite of heathendom, is made plain by the following verse, when it is said: Jews also and proselytes.

Blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke. Of the fire and smoke it was spoken in the preceding book; but by blood he means not only that of the Lord's wound but also that of the Lord's sweat, when, as He prayed before He was betrayed, His sweat became as drops of blood running down upon the ground. This is reckoned among the signs wrought by God for this reason, that it is shown never to be found in the ordinary course of human nature. It is therefore a sign, because it signified that the whole world was to be washed with the blood of the Lord, so that, as once the tabernacle or temple had been consecrated to the Lord with the blood of victims, so now throughout the whole world the people of the faithful should be dedicated to Him as a holy house by His own blood, and there should be a place of prayer not only at Jerusalem, but in every place of His dominion the elect should lift up their hands to the Lord in pure prayers.

The sun shall be turned into darkness. The noun for darkness is read in the Greek in the singular number, that is, σκότος; and the Latin translator, because he could not render it in the singular number, of necessity set tenebrae in the plural. I have thought this worth mentioning so that anyone of the English nation who reads these things may know that it is not necessary for him, on account of the authority of the Latin tongue,

to render "darkness" in the plural into his own speech, but rather in the singular, since he can equally do this on account, namely, of the Greek authority from which it was translated into Latin scripture.

This man, delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have slain, afflicting Him by the hands of the wicked. In the Greek it has one word more, which nevertheless bears much on the matter: And having received Him, delivered by the foreknowledge of God. For He was delivered by the governor into their power on this condition, that they should choose either Him or the robber; and they, having accepted this choice, granted life to the robber, but killed Jesus by the hands of the soldiers, though by their own clamours and entreaties.

Whom God raised up, the pains being loosed, because it was impossible that He should be held by it. The sense of this sentence seems to be that, when the Lord descended to the underworld, the pains of punishment were loosed, that is, they were quite unable to touch Him. But if we look into the Greek authority, where it is written: Whom God raised up on the third day, loosing through Him the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it, it is plain indeed that he says the pains of hell, or of death, were loosed through the Lord; that is, that through His descent to the underworld the saints were set free from the places of the underworld, who, although they were held in the bosom of Abraham, that is, in the consolation of a hidden rest, were nevertheless by that very fact not wholly free from the pain of death or of hell. By it they did not yet merit to see and to enter the joys on high in heaven, until there came to pass what was said by the prophet to the Lord: Thou also by the blood of the covenant hast brought forth Thy prisoners out of the pit in which there is no water (Zech. 9:11). For if the saints in the pit of the infernal places were wholly free from the pain of death, why does he call them prisoners, until they should be brought out by the blood of Christ? He loosed, therefore, through Him the pains of death, because it was impossible that He should be held by it. For just as He Himself was exempt from the power of death, so He was able also to rescue whomever He wished from the dominion of death.

For David says concerning Him, that is, in His person: I foresaw the Lord always before me, for He is at my right hand, that I may not be moved. By setting out what He Himself did, the Mediator of God and men gives us, who are mere men, counsel by which we may avoid sins. For he who continually beholds the presence of his Maker with the eye of the mind by no means turns it towards transgressions. He also states the reason why he was not moved. For when the Lord gives help on the right hand, the things on the left do not prevail; but the soul which He guards perseveres the more firmly in Him. And fittingly he said that the Lord was at his right hand, because if He does not hold this side, the devil, lying in wait, will at once seize it, as is written of Judas: And let the devil stand at his right hand (Ps. 108:6).

Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced. Therefore, namely because He stood at his right hand, he testifies that gladness arose in his thoughts and exultation on his tongue. And

indeed, as the passion drew near, He said: For My soul is sorrowful even unto death, and He began to be afraid and to be weary (Mark 14:33–34). But He was saddened in order to show that He was a true man in soul and body, and truly capable of suffering; yet He exulted in soul and tongue, because He knew that the human race was to be saved by His passion.

Moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope. He rejoiced indeed that He could not be moved or overcome by His enemies; but he says that, beyond this joy, gladness grew still further for Him because in His flesh, by the death of which He saved us, He was also to furnish an example of resurrection.

For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt Thou give Thy holy one to see corruption. It is certain indeed that the Lord's soul was not left among those below, for, having taken away those for whose sake it had gone down there, it soon returned to the things above; it is certain also that His flesh was not corrupted, for it was glorified by a swift resurrection.

But it must be asked how He Himself, in another psalm, reproaching the impenitent and the stubborn, speaks of the labour of His passion: What profit is there in my blood, while I go down to corruption (Ps. 29:10)? This is resolved thus: there He says that He goes down to corruption when His body is pierced by the inbreaking of the fastening nails and of the lance, since that very piercing through of the solid body is shown, not without reason, to be called a kind of corruption. Here, however, He rightly denies that corruption takes place, that is, putrefaction, which generally lays waste human flesh, but could in no way come upon His most holy body.

Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; Thou wilt fill me with gladness with Thy countenance. These words are rightly understood not only of the Lord, Who needed no other guide to overcome the kingdom of death, but, having once received the fullness of divine power and wisdom, was able by Himself to destroy death, to rise again to life, and to ascend to the right hand of the Father; but also of His elect, who by His gift find the way of truth, by which they may return to the life which they lost in the first-formed man, and who themselves also shall be filled with gladness with the countenance of God the Father; for this is our perfect blessedness, when we shall have merited to see Him face to face, as Philip understood excellently when he said: Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough (John 14:8). For that gladness of seeing the face of the Lord is enough, and nothing further is required, because there will be nothing further to be required when He Who is above all has been seen. And these are the words which follow in the psalm: Delights in Thy right hand even to the end (Ps. 15:11).

Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath that of the fruit of his loins one should sit upon his throne, foreseeing it he spoke of the resurrection of Christ, etc. In the Greek there is more: Of the fruit of his loins to raise up the Christ, and to sit upon his throne. But in what follows: Foreseeing it he spoke of the resurrection of His Christ, that He was not left in hell; in the Greek it is had more consistently: That

His soul was not left in hell. And holy Fulgentius, writing to Thrasamund, puts it thus: «For concerning the raising of His body from the dead also he at once added, saying: Nor did His flesh see corruption.» In accordance with which the prophet too embraced both, saying: For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt Thou give Thy holy one to see corruption (Ps. 15:10).

And having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this which you see and hear. In the Greek it reads thus: He has poured out this gift which you now see and hear. Above, indeed, he taught concerning Jesus, Whom the Jews crucified, that He was raised by God and that He is the Christ; but now, drawing the faith of his hearers little by little to higher things, he shows that He is also true God, when he affirms that He poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit, which every wise man knows belongs to divine power alone. And he fittingly used the same word "pouring out" which, in the prophet's saying quoted above, he had first said the Lord spoke, so that from this too his hearers might gather that it was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself Who, even before He took flesh, had been accustomed to speak in the prophets; Who ordered the future times of the world as He willed; Who would give signs and wonders in heaven and on earth; Who would save all who call upon His name; and Who would accomplish, as the Son of God and true God, the other things which the prophetic word describes.

For David did not ascend into the heavens, yet he himself says: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand. Some codices have "The Lord says"; but the Greek exemplars, both in this book and in the Psalter, have "The Lord said". Now blessed Peter most plainly sets out through this psalm how what he had taken above from another psalm was to be understood, that the Lord swore to David to raise up the Christ from the fruit of his loins and to sit upon his throne; namely, that this throne of the kingdom too was to be understood not in the earthly Jerusalem, in which David reigned, but at the right hand of His majesty in the heavens. There he clearly established from the prophetic Scriptures both natures of one and the same Redeemer of ours: the human, namely, which sprang from the fruit of David's loins through the virgin, and the divine, on account of which the man, ascending into heaven, was taken up to the right hand of the Father. For in the one He was truly the son of David, in the other the Lord of David; on which account he also fittingly added:

Let all the house of Israel therefore know most certainly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ. For he proved that He is Lord from the word of David, where he says: The Lord said to my Lord; and from what the prophet Joel said: And it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh (Joel 2:28), since he had declared that He truly accomplished this on that very day; and he taught that He is the Christ by the word of the same David, in which he sang that it was said to Him by the Lord: Sit at My right hand; and at the same time from this, that, speaking through the prophet, He declared the Holy Spirit to be His own Spirit, and that this Spirit by His own

power He was able to give to men. For who but an unbeliever doubts that this belongs to no man at all, except the Mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ? For how could it be that He should not rightly be believed to be truly the Christ, that is, anointed with all the fullness of the Holy Spirit, Who is proved to have given of that same Spirit with power to whom He willed? He says therefore that God has made Him both Lord and Christ. Is not the Lord Christ both God and man, one person existing in two natures? In the divinity He was indeed born eternally of the Father, but in the humanity He was made in time by the Father Himself, when He disposes that He be made flesh in the Virgin's womb by the working of the Holy Spirit.

God has made Him, he says, both Lord and Christ, this Jesus Whom you crucified. For Jesus is the proper name of that man whom the Jews crucified, as Aaron or David are proper names of men; but Lord is a word of power and majesty, to which every creature ought rightly to be subject, of which He Himself said, appearing to the disciples after the resurrection: All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Christ, moreover, is the name of a royal or priestly dignity. For priests and kings used by the law to be anointed with holy oil and on that account to be called christs, in figure, namely, of Him Who, anointed by God with the oil of gladness, that is, with the Holy Spirit, above His fellows, deigned to become for us king and great priest: priest, namely, that by the victim of His passion He might cleanse us from all sin, and that, set at the right hand of God, He might even now intercede for us; and king, that, having overcome all our adversaries, He might lead us to the immortal kingdom.

What shall we do, men and brethren? In the Greek there is more: Show us. This word we have often found added to this sentence in the little works of those who have expounded the holy Scriptures.

And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, since the Lord says through the prophet: I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy (Joel 2:28). But what he added: And to all who are far off, whomever the Lord our God shall call, looks to that testimony which he had set last from the prophet, that whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (ibid., 2:32). This pertains especially to the calling of the gentiles, who had been set far apart from the fellowship of the sons of Israel both by kinship and by merit, and yet through calling upon the name of the Lord, according to the prophet's promise, were to be saved from their error.

They therefore who received his word were baptized. Another translation, following the proper sense of the Greek truth, has this passage thus: They then, gladly receiving his word, were baptized. By this rendering it seems to be expressed more plainly that not some of those who had heard Peter's word, but all who had gathered to hear, hearing it gladly, were baptized.

And the Lord added daily those who were being saved in

together. In the Greek it reads thus: But the Lord added those who were being saved to the Church; and then another narrative begins.

CHAPTER III.

Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the ninth hour of prayer. This can be fitted to the preceding sentence thus: since the Lord, as the apostles preached, was daily gathering believers into His Church, the first of the apostles went up into the temple to ask God "for the same thing" [in idipsum], that is, that He would ever provide increase for His Church.

And immediately his bases and soles were made firm. Bases is a Greek noun, and it is set so in the Greek itself; in Latin it means "supports": by this noun it indicates that his steps were strengthened, as some have also rendered it in Latin. But it should be known that steps are properly called διαβήματα or πορίαι among the Greeks.

And they were filled with amazement and ecstasy. Another edition, for ecstasy, that is, a going-out of mind, put "wonder", not properly; for a greater wonder is sometimes wont to lead the mind into a going-out, and to carry it beyond the accustomed manner of thinking to higher things.

The God of our fathers has glorified His Son Jesus, whom you indeed delivered up, etc. In the Greek it stands more consistently: The God of our fathers has glorified His servant [puerum] Jesus. For it was fitting that the wise teacher, in speaking about the Lord to those who had killed Him, should first make mention of the humanity which could be delivered up and slain; then, the glory of His resurrection having been gradually disclosed, should declare that He is also God and the Son of God. Accordingly, a little later he calls Him the Author of life. And at the close of the discourse more openly: To you first, he says, God, raising up His Son, sent Him to bless you, that your sins may be blotted out, so that when the times of refreshment shall come from the presence of the Lord, then your sins may be blotted out. Now by the times of refreshment he means the separation of the universal judgement and of the redemption of the just, concerning which they themselves, having indeed suffered tribulations but saved in hope, say to the Lord in the psalm: We have passed through fire and water, and Thou hast brought us out into refreshment (Ps. 65). For then shall our sins be fully blotted out, when by the power of the resurrection the last enemy, death, shall have been destroyed (1 Cor. 15). In a certain translation we find this verse set thus, for the sake of explaining the sense: So that when the times of refreshment shall come, they may come to you also from the face of the Lord. And indeed in the Greek it is written so, with the addition of that pronoun: So that when the times of refreshment shall come to you from the face of the Lord.

Whom heaven indeed must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, which He has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old. This is what the Psalmist testifies was said by God the Father to the same Lord Jesus Christ: Sit at My right hand, until I make Thy enemies the footstool of Thy feet (Ps. 109). For He was taken up into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God. In that seat of the Father's majesty He indeed abides ever by His divinity, and was never absent from it; but in the assumed

humanity He will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead, when all His enemies shall be put under His feet, and all things shall be restored which God spoke by all the prophets from the beginning of the world; for when all the saints enter with the Lord into eternal life, and all the reprobate with the devil undergo perpetual punishments, nothing at all will remain that the prophets might promise us to be hoped for further, because both parties, the good, that is, and the wicked, will have received at the last examination an irrevocable sentence from the just Judge. And greatly is Origen deceived, and greatly does he deceive, who thinks that after this judgement, though after a very long interval of time, he will be set free together with the other sinners who shall have been sent by the Judge from the left hand with the devil into Gehenna, and be brought to the heavenly kingdom, as though the prophet promised this to them when he says: And they shall be shut up there in prison, and after many days they shall be visited (Isa. 24), whereas to sound sense the prophet's meaning is plain, by which he foretold that the enemies and persecutors of holy Church would each be snatched into Gehenna on the day of his departure, but foresaw that all of them on the day of judgement would be released from there for a little while, until, having received an immortal body, they are hurled once again into the double punishment of eternal death. For that the prophet intended this in this sentence his own following words declare: when he had said, And after many days they shall be visited, he at once added: And the moon shall blush, and the sun shall be confounded (ibid.), which not only the prophetic but also the evangelical words declare will come to pass on the day of judgement.

Moses indeed said: For the Lord your God has raised up a prophet for you from your brethren; you shall hear him as myself in all things whatsoever he shall speak to you, etc. The beginning of this passage has more in the Greek: Moses indeed said to your fathers: For the Lord your God has raised up a prophet for you. The force of the sentence is plain: our Lord took the reality of flesh from the people of Israel, appearing in the likeness of Moses, so that, as he brought the carnal Israel, instructed and purified by ceremonies and the rites of the Law, into the land of promise, so the Lord also, gathering the spiritual Israel from the whole world by the grace of the Gospel, might bring it to the heavenly kingdoms. And as those who despised the law of Moses were cast out of the land of promise by hostile nations, so those also who have scorned the teaching of the Gospel's grace are driven out of the company of the saints by avenging spirits. For this is what follows:

And it shall be that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from the people. But it should be noted that blessed Peter here took care to keep not the words of the Mosaic sentence but its sense. For it is written in Deuteronomy, where Moses says to the children of Israel: A prophet from your nation and from your brethren like me will the Lord your God raise up for you; him you shall hear, as you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb (Deut. 18). And a little after: And the Lord God said to me, They have spoken all things well: I will raise up for them a prophet from the midst of their brethren like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak

to them all that I shall command him. But whoever will not hear his words which he shall speak in My name, I will be the avenger (ibid.). In place of which Peter put: He shall be cut off from the people, indicating more plainly that this is the manner of divine vengeance, that those who despise the heavenly commands are made exiles from the lot of the elect. Here, then, and in many other places where the apostles and evangelists set down examples from the Old Testament, it is clear that they sought the sense of the Scriptures, not the words, and did not greatly concern themselves about order and wording, so long as the matter lay open to the understanding.

Saying to Abraham: And in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. By both these testimonies, that is, both the one promulgated by the Lord to Moses and the one to Abraham, both His severity and His goodness are declared: His goodness in those who, having received faith in Christ, are found worthy to be blessed by Him; His severity in those who, by the desert of their contempt and disobedience, are cut off from the people of the blessed, that is, are cast out beyond the bounds of eternal blessedness. And it was said, In your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed, in the way it is said in the Gospel: He was the true light which enlightens every man coming into the world (John 1). For neither are all the families of the earth blessed in Christ, nor is every man coming into the world enlightened by Christ, since far more are those who, passing their life in the darkness and curse of the first transgression in which they were born, or even adding worse, are damned for ever. But it is to be understood that in the seed of Abraham, that is, in Christ, all the families of the earth are blessed, as many as are to be blessed; and by His grace every man is enlightened who belongs to the lot of the saints, which is in the light: nor is there any other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4). Although it can also rightly be understood thus: that there is no kindred or family of the earth in which some do not receive the blessing of the heavenly inheritance; of those families, I mean, or kindreds, seventy-two in number, into which we read that the human race was divided after the flood at the building of the tower. All the elect, then, shall be blessed in the seed of Abraham, namely in the Mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ: not only those who believed in Him after His Incarnation, but also those who by their birth in the flesh preceded the times of His Incarnation. For the same God-man, ascending to heaven, opened the gates of the heavenly kingdom to all, and to all He will say on the day of judgement: Come, blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom (Matt. 25).

CHAPTER IV.

The priests and the magistrate of the temple came upon them. Magistrate is to be read in the singular number, which is very easily made clear from the Greek, where στρατηγός is written in the singular: for which in Latin we find written in some manuscripts "the overseer of the temple", in others, more correctly, "the praetor of the temple". For in Greek a praetor is called στρατηγός, whereas a magistrate or ruler is called ἄρχων.

He said to them: Rulers of the people and elders. In the Greek

has more: And elders of Israel, hear. Likewise in what follows, where it is said: By this man he stands before you whole: in the Greek it has: Before you whole, today, and in no other.

Now seeing the constancy of Peter and of John, having learned that they were men without letters and idiotae, they marvelled. "Without letters" is said not because they did not know letters, but because they had no skill in the art of grammar. For in the Greek, more plainly, for this word stands ἀγράμματοι, that is, "unlettered"; while idiotae are properly called the unskilled. Thus in the Epistle to the Corinthians, where it is written: Even if unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge (2 Cor. 11), for "unskilled" the Greek has ἰδιώτης.

For all were making famous that which had been done. It is better in the Greek: For all glorified God for that which had been done. And what has been added in our manuscripts, In that which had happened, is not in the Greek. Indeed, "they glorified" and "they made famous" are customarily rendered into Latin indifferently from one Greek word, which is ἐδόξαζον; but there is a difference between a deed's being made famous and God's being made famous, or glorified, in the deed. For deeds or words to be made famous is for them to be brought to the knowledge of very many as report spreads them abroad, which can happen also with human affairs wonderfully performed; but for God to be made famous, or glorified, in the deeds of men is proper to Christian piety and humility, as He Himself commands, saying: Let them see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5).

Why have the nations raged, and the peoples meditated vain things? The prophet asks not as one who does not know, but by marvelling at the madness of the impious he rebukes those who rose up together against the Lord the Saviour, though in nothing harmed by Him, nay rather helped by many benefits. He put "nations" for the soldiers of the Romans, "peoples" for the Jews. Hence the nations are fittingly said to have raged, but the peoples to have meditated vain things against God. For the chief men of the Jews were considering with diligent meditation how they might deliver the Lord to death; whereas the soldiers are found to have brought nothing against Him and to have laid no snares, but only to have obeyed the governor's commands for His insult and death. Hence they too are said to rage, being driven, that is, by an unskilled and disorderly impulse; and since raging properly belongs to wild beasts, they are deservedly said to rage who, setting reason aside, have been inflamed with a bestial fury. And that the peoples are said to have meditated vain things looks back to what is said of the blessed man in the preceding psalm: But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he shall meditate day and night (Ps. 1). For as he is blessed who spends all his time in meditation on the divine law, so that people is rightly to be assigned to perpetual miseries which not only in its pride turns itself away from meditating on God's law, but also in its madness has busied itself with frequent meditation against God, the very author of the law, and its own Lord.

The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.

By rulers he means the chief men of the Jews, and Pilate himself; but he puts "kings" in the plural number on account of Herod the tetrarch, as the following words of the apostles testify. Although by the plural title of kings may rightly be designated both Herod the tetrarch himself, who gave his consent to Pilate in the slaying of the Lord, and that other of the same name and malice who, in persecuting the Lord when newly born, killed the boys in Bethlehem. These, though not at the same time, yet with the same hatred and wickedness of mind, stood up together with the chief men of the Jews against the Lord and gathered together. Now it is to be noted that the linking of these verses is such that the former takes from the second the clause in which it is said, against the Lord and against His Christ, and the second takes from the first the adverb why, so that the statement of each is full: Why have the nations raged, and the peoples meditated vain things against the Lord and against His Christ? Why have the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ? And he says "kings of the earth" to distinguish them from those for whom, while they are pilgrims on earth, a kingdom is kept in heaven.

In that Thou stretchest out Thy hand for healings and signs and wonders to be done through the name of Thy holy Son Jesus. In the Greek it has, Through the name of Thy holy Servant [Pueri] Jesus: which seems to agree better with the aims of the apostles, who strove in every way that the man whom the Jews crucified, as the signs of miracles grew bright through His name, might become known as taken up into heaven and as being the Son of God.

And they spoke the word of God with confidence. In the Greek there is added: To everyone willing to believe. And also in the following passage, when it had been said: And the multitude of believers had one heart and one soul, here too in the Greek copies there is joined what our manuscripts do not have: And there was no division among them at all. And then, what is contained in our manuscripts too, brought in after it: Nor did any of them say that anything of what they possessed was his own. This sentence blessed Cyprian also set down thus in the third book of the Testimonies, saying: "And the crowd of those who believed was moved by one soul and mind; nor was there any distinction among them, nor did anyone judge as his own any of the goods that were theirs." Now this passage fits, and accords most aptly with, what was said above: that those who received the Holy Spirit on the holy day of Pentecost, though they were all Galileans, spoke in the tongues of all, Jews and proselytes, who were present from various parts of the world. For there it was signified, by a most beautiful presage, through the uniting of discordant tongues, that holy Church, by the gift of the same Spirit, would have one heart and soul among the various nations and tongues throughout the world. For it is not the part of all believers to speak in all tongues; but the uniting of diverse tongues in the faith of Christ was a sign that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all (Eph. 4).

But they had all things in common. What in Latin are called communia are in Greek called κοινά; from which word it is evident that the perfect

servants of God are called in Greek κοινοβῖται, that is, those living in common, and their dwellings κοινόβια; for it is agreed that in their language βίος means life, not that life which is the contrary of death, but that which we ask about when we ask by what manner of conduct someone leads his life, in soldiering, or in farming, or in some honourable or base craft, whether he is a monk, or a layman, or a cleric. But the life by which we are distinguished from the dead is called ζωή by the Greeks. Those, then, who so live that all things are common to them in the Lord are rightly called κοινοβῖται, by a single name compounded of two. This life is surely as much happier than the other manners of life of this world as it imitates, even in the present, the state of the world to come, where all good things are common to all the blessed, as they behold the glory of Him from whom all good things are; and since there the grace of peace and security reigns supreme, rightly was the city in which the type of this life went before called Jerusalem, that is, Vision of peace. Hence the difference both of the events and of the places is to be noted: in the work of pride, the tower, when the tongue and mind of the human race were one, they were split apart through the desert of iniquity, so that, though men there spoke in all the tongues, yet no one understood the will or words of his neighbour. But in Jerusalem the same tongues were united through the desert of humility, and all had one tongue, one will and soul. This indeed is done to this day in the whole world, while the elect, amid a manifold division of speech, serve the Lord with one undivided heart and purpose; but the reprobate all so serve the devil that the same servitude is carried on with a mind and for the most part with combative zeal and strife among themselves; on account of which their city is rightly named Babylon, that is, confusion.

And Joseph, who was surnamed Barnabas by the apostles, which is interpreted son of consolation, a Levite, a Cypriot by race, having a field, sold it, etc. It is strange how Eusebius, in the Ecclesiastical History, reckons this Barnabas, who was afterwards ordained apostle of the Gentiles with Paul, and after long companionship with him returned again to Cyprus, whence he had sprung, to preach, to be of the number of the seventy disciples of the Lord the Saviour, when blessed Luke plainly writes that he came to the discipleship of the apostles after the Lord's ascension; unless perhaps it is to be thought that he first followed the discipleship of Christ in such a way that he had not yet renounced all that he possessed. Whether that would have accorded with the teaching of the Gospel is very easily evident to anyone.

CHAPTER V.

But the high priest rising up, and all who were with him, etc. In the Greek this passage begins thus, looking back to what precedes: And seeing these things, the high priest rising up.

Now when the magistrate of the temple and the chief priests heard these words, they were in doubt concerning them what would come of it. Here too "magistrate" is to be read in the singular number, as also in what follows, where it is said: Then the magistrate went into the temple with the officers. For the Greek copy in both places in the singular

has στρατηγός, that is, praetor. But it should be known that this passage has more in the Greek, for it is written thus: Now when the priests and the magistrate of the temple and the chief priests heard these words, they marvelled, and were in doubt concerning them, what this might mean.

And the high priest questioned them, saying: We strictly commanded you, etc. It stands more consistently in the Greek: Did we not strictly command you? For to speak thus better suits one who is asking a question.

We must obey God rather than men. In the Greek it is read as a question: Must one obey God rather, or men? And fittingly did the Apostles refute the foolish and rash questioning of the high priest with a firm and prudent reply.

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus. In the Greek it has His Servant [Puerum] Jesus, according to that word of the Psalmist: Give Thy power to Thy servant [puero]; save the son of Thy handmaid (Ps. 85).

And we are witnesses of these words, and the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to all who obey Him. We are witnesses, because we saw the glory of His resurrection, because we followed Him with our eyes as He ascended into heaven.

The Holy Spirit also is witness, for He Himself strengthened us by His presence, that we might invincibly proclaim the mighty works of God even though you resist; He Himself, speaking in us, formed these very words too. And this is what the Lord promised them, saying: But when the Paraclete comes, whom I shall send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me, and you will bear witness (John 15); that is, He, by inspiring you to speak, and you, by speaking the witness outwardly, will bear witness of Me.

But a certain Pharisee in the council rising up, named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, etc. Of this Gamaliel we read also in the book of Saint Clement that he was secretly a disciple of the apostles, but by their counsel was instructed to remain among the Jews so as to soften their fury when need pressed; and that this was truly so done has today become most certainly known far and wide to the whole Church of Christ through the revelation of the relics of the most blessed protomartyr Stephen, which was brought about by divine disposition through this same man. For he appeared in a vision to the holy servant of God, the presbyter Lucian, as the same presbyter Lucian afterwards wrote to all the Churches; and he showed him, by a most sweet disclosure, where Saint Stephen had been buried, together with Nicodemus, who buried the Lord with Joseph, and also Gamaliel himself with his son Abibas.

After this man arose Judas the Galilean in the days of the enrolment [professionis]. In the Greek it has, In the days of the ἀπογραφή, that is, in the days of the registration of the census, as we also have it rendered in Latin in the ecclesiastical history.

And now therefore I say to you: Depart from these men, and let them alone. In the Greek there is more: Not defiling your hands.

But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. And

here in the Greek there is more: Neither you, nor your rulers.

Lest perhaps you be found even to fight against God. Where we have "to fight against God", or, as some have rendered it, "fighting against God", in the Greek a single noun is set, θεομάχοι. I thought this worth mentioning so that, when we find θεομάχος or θεομαχία in histories, we may know the force of the word more surely.

CHAPTER VI.

These they set before the apostles, and praying they laid hands on them. Not those who set them there, but the apostles laid hands on them. For the common administration indeed required that men be chosen as ministers for the widows; but when men were found who seemed worthy of this ministry, as the foresight of saving counsel grew by degrees, as it is wont to do, it was resolved that these same readers [lectores] themselves should be ordained ministers also of the sacred altar and of the Lord's blood, as well as of the refreshment and common table of the multitude of believers: which is proved by the word in which it is said: And praying they laid hands on them. For this is proper to those who are promoted from the common number of the faithful to the office of the most holy altar.

And Stephen, full of grace and fortitude, did wonders and great signs among the people. In the Greek there is added: In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I wrote in the preceding book that Stephen is interpreted "crowned", and what I wrote is not far from the truth. But learning more carefully, I found that in Greek Stephen means not "crowned" but "crown". For this noun is of the masculine gender among them, and therefore suits a man; whereas "crowned" is called στεφανηφόρος, as it were "crown-bearing". Thus in the psalm where we sing: Thou wilt bless the crown of the year of Thy goodness (Ps. 64), that verse begins thus among the Greeks: εὐλογήσεις τὸν στέφανον. Expounding the mystery of this name beautifully, Eusebius says: "Immediately after his ordination he was stoned by those who also killed the Lord, whereby the crown of his own name too is given to Stephen by Christ." A crown is also called among the Greeks, in the neuter gender, στέμμα. I thought this worth mentioning because we often find this word put in Latin books as well.

But there arose certain of the synagogue which is called that of the Libertines and of the Cyrenians, etc. In the Greek itself too the name "of the Libertines" is written. Now the sons of freedmen are called libertini, that is, of those who after slavery were manumitted and granted liberty. It is evident, then, that those who first rebelled against the faith of Christ were sprung from servile stock; who, although they were set free from human masters, by no means ceased to be slaves of sin. In their person are fittingly figured the heretics, most wicked persecutors of the faith and of all holiness, of whom Peter says: For speaking with the pride of vanity, they entice in the desires of the flesh, of wantonness, those who are escaping a little, who live in error, promising them liberty, though they themselves are slaves of corruption (2 Pet. 2).

To this servitude, indeed, is opposed the liberty of the Spirit, which the Beroeans had, in whose praise, when Paul and Silas were preaching, it is said: Now these were more noble than those who are at Thessalonica, who received the word with all eagerness, daily searching the Scriptures.

And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Holy Spirit who spoke. In the Greek there is more: And they were not able to resist the wisdom which was in him, and the Holy Spirit who spoke: because they were refuted by him with all confidence. Since therefore they could not gainsay the truth, they then suborned men to say, etc.

CHAPTER VII.

Then the high priest said. In the Greek there is added "to Stephen", and then is subjoined: Whether these things are so.

And he said: Men, brethren and fathers, hear: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham. Since blessed Stephen was accused of having spoken words of blasphemy against Moses and God, at the very beginning of his discourse he most watchfully met their calumny, saying that God Himself, who spoke to the fathers and prophets, is the God of majesty and glory. And when in his speaking he came as far as the times of Moses, he extolled him indeed with worthy praises; but he proved that they had been rebellious and ever disobedient to his words. But it should be noted with how much art of speaking he proceeds; for he began to speak to his persecutors as if he feared them: Men, brethren and fathers, hear. What more gently, what more mildly could win the hearer, in order to commend the Saviour? He began winningly, so as to be heard for a long time. And since he had been accused of having spoken words against God and the law, just as at the beginning of his address he showed that he preached the true God, so too he set forth to them the giving of the law, so as to be the preacher of that law of which he was accused of being the destroyer. But in the course of the discourse, when he refuted their errors both new and old, he showed most plainly of how great authority his mind was, how free his soul was from fear of the enemy.

And they were laid in the tomb which Abraham bought for a price of silver. In the Greek it has Our father Abraham, which blessed Stephen added in order to win over his hearers, that he might be heard longer and more willingly.

But when the time of remission drew near, which God had acknowledged to Abraham. It is better in the Greek: Which God had promised to Abraham.

And as he drew near to look, the voice of the Lord came: I am the God of your fathers. In the Greek it is written thus: A voice came from heaven saying to him: I am the God of your fathers; loose the shoes from your feet. For the place on which you stand is holy ground. According to the moral sense this passage admonishes us that, standing in the Church, which is deservedly called holy ground, we should renounce dead works.

And He gave them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets. He says it in the singular number because among the Hebrews the twelve prophets are one book, and not twelve books according to the number of the same

prophets. Now the host of heaven is sometimes indeed the name for the army of the angels; yet in this place it seems more consistent that he called the stars the host of heaven, since he at once adds the testimony of the prophet, in which they are convicted of having taken up the star of their god in place of God, the tabernacle of Moloch in place of the tabernacle of the true God.

Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you have always resisted the Holy Spirit. He shows them that the circumcision of the foreskin, in which they gloried against the grace of the Gospel, availed nothing for salvation, since they were proved to have unclean thought and hearing. And at the same time, by saying these things, he expounds to them, as if interpreting, what the Angel signified when he appeared to Moses in the fire of the flame of the bush, so that the bush burned and was not consumed. For the fire designates the Holy Spirit; the bush, which is a kind of thorn, figuratively proclaimed the sins of that people. The Lord therefore appeared to Moses in a bush that had fire yet was not burned up, to show that He Himself would come with the illumination and ardour of the Holy Spirit to instruct the people, and yet would not consume the sins of that people; rather, that people would ever resist His loving benefits with the densest thickets of its own wickedness.

Behold, I see the heavens opened. What we say in Latin as video is said in Greek θεωρῶ, from which verb is derived the noun "theoric", that is, of the contemplative life. Through it some of the elect, while still held in this life, the eye of the heart having been more diligently cleansed, being divinely uplifted, have merited to gaze upon the joys of the life to come: as Saint Stephen in the present passage, as Paul when he was caught up to the third heaven, and many others elsewhere. Hence God too is called in Greek Θεός, because He sees all things, and all things are naked and open to His eyes.

Lord, do not lay this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Beautifully he says "he fell asleep", and did not say "He died". For he offered the sacrifice of love, and fell asleep in the hope of the resurrection.

CHAPTER VIII.

And on that day there arose a great persecution in the Church which was at Jerusalem, and all were scattered through the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles. If, when the Church was scattered, the apostles remained in Jerusalem, as Luke says, it is evident that he wrote a falsehood who, setting forth a book in the person of Melito, bishop of Asia, on the passing of the blessed Mother of God, says that in the second year after the Lord's ascension the apostles had all been divided over the whole world to preach, each in his own province; and that all of them, when the passing of blessed Mary drew near, were lifted up on clouds from the places in which they were preaching the word of God and carried off to Jerusalem, and set down before the door of her house; among them also Paul, lately converted from persecutor to the faith of Christ, who was taken up with Barnabas into the ministry of the Gentiles: which writing also relates specially of John the apostle that at that time he was preaching at Ephesus: all of which plainly contradicts the words of blessed Luke, in which he narrates that the apostles, when the other faithful had been driven out of Jerusalem, remained there and preached everywhere, until the Church throughout the whole of Judaea

and Samaria and Galilee had peace. That this could not have been accomplished in one year is doubtful to no one. He also plainly suggests that Paul was ordained to the ministry of the gentiles together with Barnabas not in the second year after the Lord's ascension, but a long time afterwards. Far be it from us, moreover, to believe that the blessed apostle John, to whom the Lord on the cross commended His virgin mother, a virgin to a virgin, went away after one year and left her alone, and so long cast down that she even feared her body would be burned by enemies when she had died; and that, after he had been caught up in the clouds and had come back to her as one forgetful or careless of her, she anxiously entreated him, saying: "I beg you, son John, to be mindful of the word of your master, my Lord Jesus Christ, Who commended me to you. For behold, I am called to go the way of all the earth. And I have heard the counsels of the Jews, saying: Let us wait for the day when she who bore Jesus of Nazareth dies, and let us burn her body; now therefore, son, take care of my funeral rites." I have taken care to mention these things because I know that some, with incautious rashness, give assent to the aforesaid volume against the authority of blessed Luke.

And devout men took care of Stephen, and made great lamentation over him. This lamentation and the killing of blessed Stephen are well remembered by the book of the revelation of his relics, which we also mentioned above, in which Gamaliel is related to have said, among other things, to the priest Lucian in a vision: "I am Gamaliel, who brought up Paul the apostle of Christ and taught him the law in Jerusalem. Here with me in the eastern part of the tomb lies my lord Stephen himself, who was stoned by the Jews and the chief priests in Jerusalem for the faith of Christ outside the gate that is towards the north, which leads to Kedar; where he lay cast out day and night, so that burial should not be given him, according to the command of the impious rulers, that his body might be consumed by wild beasts. But by the will of God not one of these touched him, neither wild beast, nor bird, nor dog. I, Gamaliel, having compassion on the ministry of Christ, and hastening to have a reward and a share with the holy man of faith, sent by night as many religious men as I knew, believers in Christ Jesus, dwelling in Jerusalem in the midst of the Jews: and I exhorted them, and supplied what was needful from my substance, and persuaded them to go secretly, so as to carry his body in my carriage to my estate, that is, to Caphar Gamala (which is interpreted, the estate of Gamaliel), twenty miles distant from the city; and there I had lamentation made for him for forty-five days, and had him placed in my new tomb in the eastern recess, and I ordered that whatever was needful for his lamentation should be given them from my own."

Therefore they who were dispersed went about preaching the word of God. For "dispersed", in the Greek there is "disseminated", that is, disparentes. For they were those of whom Isaiah said: All who see them shall know them, that they are the seed which the Lord has blessed,

and of whom the Lord says in the parable of the Gospel: But the good seed, these are the children of the kingdom (Matt. 13:38). This seed was therefore sown through the regions so that the harvest of faith, which was begun in Jerusalem, might fill first Judaea and Samaria, then the whole world. Lastly, of these same dispersed, or rather disseminated, men we read in what follows that they spoke the word not only to Jews but also to Greeks, and through them the most noble foundations of the Church being born in Antioch were laid.

And Philip had gone down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ to them. He too was of the number of the disseminated, who first preached Christ to Samaria; and what Christ said to the apostles was begun through a deacon: And you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria (Acts 1:8).

But a certain man, who had previously been a magician in the city, seducing the people of Samaria. For what is "seducing", in the Greek is written ἐξιστῶν, which means turning into ecstasy, that is, an excess of mind, or into stupor and astonishment, namely by the displays of his conjuring tricks.

To whom all listened, from the least to the greatest, saying: This man is the power of God. Hic is not an adverb of place, but a pronoun. As if it were said: That man is the power of God.

May your money be with you in perdition. It is more correctly written "unto perdition", according to the Greek authority, than "in perdition". For his money was not going to be together with him in that perdition by which the wicked man was to be damned; rather, the money which he offered the apostles for a sacrilegious purchase he was ordered to keep with himself, since they refused to accept it, and this unto his own perdition, so that, namely, on account of this money, which he had gathered for an unjust purchase, he should pay eternal penalties.

CHAPTER IX.

For behold, he is praying, and he sees a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him. In the Greek it runs thus: And he saw in a vision a man, that is, ἐν ὁράματι, a word which the priest Juvencus also used in his Gospel poem, saying:

Keep all men without knowledge of this vision.

It appears, then, that through those three days in which, blinded, he awaited the coming grace of light, he did not lie idle and sluggish, but rather, raised up by divine illumination, he was searching out heavenly secrets; and it is, unless I am mistaken, credible that at that time he was taught the mystery of the Gospel dispensation, in which he himself glories, saying to the Galatians: For I neither received it from man, nor learned it, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:12). And a little later: But when it pleased Him Who set me apart from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the gentiles, immediately I did not consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go to Jerusalem, etc. (Gal. 1:15–17). And the text of this book too, where it is added: And he was with the disciples who were at Damascus for some days, and immediately

he preached Jesus to them in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God (Acts 9:19–20), by no means asserts that he learned anything from men, but confirms only that immediately after baptism he took up the ministry of an outstanding teacher. He is surely to be compared to him of whom it is written: Because the word of the Lord inflamed him (Ps. 104:19).

The Jews took counsel to kill him. But their plot became known to Paul; and they were watching the gates of the city also day and night, to kill him. It was not the Jews who were watching, but the citizens themselves with their king Aretas, as the Apostle himself, who was besieged and escaped, writes to the Galatians. For gentiles and Jews, though they disagree among themselves, always agree in the persecution of Christians.

And when he had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join himself to the disciples. In this verse in the Greek the name of Paul is added: And when Paul had come to Jerusalem, not because he was called so at that time, before he converted Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus, to the faith of Christ, but he is called so here by anticipation, blessed Luke fittingly saying it: to signify in advance that he was to be called Paul at the point where he relates that he came to Jerusalem for the first time after his conversion and was joined to the apostles, so that he who a little before had gone out from there as the proud persecutor of the Church might now enter as the humble defender of the Church. For since paulum in Latin means "little", he rightly preferred to be called Paul, who amid the greatest workings of miracles did not fail to remain humble. Nor indeed is it to be thought that Paul or Peter are Hebrew words, and not rather Latin or Greek, since it is agreed that the Hebrews have no letter p at all.

But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles, and told them how on the way he had seen the Lord, etc. When these things took place, and to which apostles Barnabas brought Paul, Paul himself shows, writing to the Galatians: But when it pleased Him Who set me apart from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, and the rest, until he says: Then after three years I came to Jerusalem to see Peter, and I stayed with him fifteen days. But I saw none other of the apostles, except James the brother of the Lord (Gal. 1:15–19). What Luke therefore says next: And he was with them, going in and going out in Jerusalem, it is credible that this was done during the fifteen days in which he asserts that he stayed with Peter and James. And what follows, he himself in the Epistle: Then I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia (Gal. 1:21), and how this came about Luke accordingly suggests thus, saying: He also spoke and disputed with the Greeks, but they sought to kill him. When the brethren learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him away to Tarsus. For this is a city of Cilicia, and Caesarea Philippi too is a city of Syria. And what he adds: But I was unknown by face to the Churches of Judaea which were in Christ; but they only had heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith which he once attacked (Gal. 1:22–23). This is what Luke set down earlier here, that he tried

to join himself to the disciples, and all feared him, not believing that he was a disciple, until they learned it from Barnabas' account. Since, then, it is established that Paul came to Jerusalem three years after his conversion, and was joined to the number of the apostles, being still, as he himself writes, unknown by face to the Churches of Judaea which were in Christ, they err greatly who, following the books of the apocrypha, think that he had already been ordained to the apostolate of the gentiles together with Barnabas in the second year after the Lord's passion.

The Church indeed throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria had peace. Where in Latin it says "throughout all", in the Greek there is καθ' ὅλης. Hence it is to be noted that the Church is called catholic from this, that, spread through the whole world, it dwells in one peace.

And it was filled, or multiplied, as it is written in the Greek, with the consolation of the Holy Spirit. For what we say "consolation", in Greek is said παρακλήσει; whence it is plainly clear that the Holy Spirit is called the Paraclete for this reason, that, enlightening the hearts of the faithful, He multiplies the Church in the whole world and fills it with His grace.

CHAPTER X.

And send for Simon, who is surnamed Peter; he is lodging with a certain Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea. All things in holy Scripture are full of spiritual figures, even the names and the position of places. Peter lodges in the house of Simon, that is, of one who obeys; and he is a tanner, because he is a teacher of the Church; there he has a welcome dwelling and a beloved lodging where he finds obedient hearers, where he finds those who chastise their body and bring it into subjection (1 Cor. 9:27); who, fortified by God, stand in the citadel of the virtues, so that, having passed over all the waves of the slipping world, they look down on them with the tranquil freedom of the mind. For this is what it means that Simon the tanner has a house, in which he receives Peter, in that part of the city which is by the sea: that perfect hearers of the word hold in holy Church that manner of life which spurns either the fleeting glory of the world or its temporal and changeable terrors with the one constancy of unfeigned faith.

An ecstasy of mind fell upon him, and he saw heaven opened. The opening of heaven signifies the revelation of heavenly mysteries soon to come to the gentiles, and the very entrance to the heavenly kingdom that was to be thrown open.

Rise, Peter, kill and eat. What in Latin is said "kill", in Greek in this place is said θύσον, which is not the general word for killing, but the word proper to that killing by which victims are immolated to God. For a victim or sacrifice is called θυσία in Greek, and an altar θυσιαστήριον. And in the psalm where we sing: Sacrifice the sacrifice of justice (Ps. 4:6), in Greek it says θύσατε θυσίαν, and, Immolate to God the sacrifice of praise (Ps. 49:14), θύσον τῷ Θεῷ θυσίαν. According to this meaning, then, it is said to Peter: θύσον and eat, which our translator rendered "Kill and eat". But he could equally have rendered "Immolate and eat", so that Peter might understand that the living creatures of various kinds were offered to him from heaven for this purpose, that by preaching he should make into a victim of the Lord those who were signified by such creatures,

those, namely, rescued from the harmful life of their fathers' tradition and carried over into the new life of divine service through the sacraments of the Lord's passion.

What God has purified, do not call common. The meaning of this divine utterance lies plain and easy: that the gentiles whom Peter still thought unclean, the inward providence of their Maker was already counting among the clean. But the custom of holy Scripture is to be noted, which is wont to call unclean things common, because surely he who wishes to serve various allurements cannot be clean, as Scripture says: No one can serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). And again: You shall adore the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve (Luke 4:8). Let him, then, who desires to be clean not divide his mind among diverse and manifold thoughts, but bind himself to following the will of his Maker alone.

And Cornelius said: From four days ago until this hour I was praying at the ninth hour in my house. In the Greek it is written more fully and more plainly: From the fourth day until this hour I was fasting and worshipping, from the sixth hour until the ninth. Where it is plainly shown that from the fourth day before he spoke these things with Peter he remained fasting until the ninth hour; and that his fast might be made acceptable to God, he spent the time from the sixth hour of the day until the ninth in devout prayers; and therefore he merited to obtain what he sought with such earnestness of fasting and prayer.

He is lodging in the house of Simon a tanner by the sea. At once therefore I sent to you, and you have done well in coming. There follows in the Greek: Who, when he comes, will speak to you.

Now therefore we are all present in your sight; hear all things whatsoever have been commanded you by the Lord. In the Greek there is: We are present in the sight of God. This was rightly said by him who had a mind ready to obey the divine will as soon as he learned it, and who believed His majesty to be present everywhere.

To us who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead. In the Greek is added "for forty days"; and Saint Augustine declared that it was so read in his codex, and in expounding it added: "Not that they had eaten and drunk with Him every day for forty days. For that will contradict John, who placed between those eight days in which He was not seen by them, so that He was manifested a third time at the sea of Tiberias." And expounding elsewhere the mystery of His refreshment and likewise of His fasting through the same number of days, he says: "He fasted when He was tempted before His death, still needing food; but He ate and drank when He was glorified, no longer needing food. For there He was showing our toil in Himself, here His consolation in us, marking out each with forty days. For He fasted forty days when He was tempted in the desert, as it is written in the Gospel, before the death of His flesh; and again for forty days He was with the disciples, going in and going out, eating and drinking after the resurrection of His flesh." By this number forty seems to be signified

the course of this world, in those who are called by grace to Him Who came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it. For the precepts of the law are ten, now spread through the world by the grace of Christ, and the world is fourfold, and ten multiplied by four make forty, since those who have been redeemed by the Lord, He has gathered them from the lands, from the east and the west, from the north and the sea (Ps. 106:2–3). Fasting, then, for forty days before the death of the flesh, He was as it were crying out: Abstain from the desires of this world (1 Pet. 2:11); but eating and drinking for forty days after the resurrection of the flesh, He was as it were crying out: Behold, I am with you even to the consummation of the world. For fasting belongs to the tribulation of the contest, since he who is in the struggle abstains from all things; but food belongs to the hope of peace, which will not be perfect until our body, whose redemption we await, has put on immortality, in which we do not yet glory by attaining it, but are already fed by hoping for it. The Apostle shows that we do both at once, saying: Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, as though the former were in the food, the latter in the fast. For at the same time, while we take the way of the Lord, we both fast from the vanity of the present world and are refreshed by the promise of the world to come, not setting our heart here, feeding on what is above there.

And the faithful of the circumcision who had come with Peter were astonished, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on the gentiles also. For they heard them speaking in tongues, etc. Like this is that saying of the same apostle Peter, when he gave an account to the Jews of why he had entrusted the sacraments of baptism to the uncircumcised.

If then, he says, God gave them the same gift as to us also, etc. And there are many other testimonies of the Scriptures which agree in attesting that the Holy Spirit is the gift of God, in so far as He is given to those who through Him love God. He is therefore the gift of God in so far as He is given to those to whom He is given; but in Himself He is God, even if He is given to no one, because He was God coeternal with the Father and the Son before He was given to anyone; nor, because they give and He is given, is He therefore less than they. For He is so given as the gift of God that He also gives Himself as God. For the Spirit breathes where He wills (John 3:8).

CHAPTER XI.

And the disciples, according as each had means, purposed to send relief to the brethren who dwelt in Judaea. And this they did, sending it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Paul. To those who understand badly, the disciples seem here not to have kept the command of the Lord in which He says: Do not be anxious about tomorrow (Matt. 6:34); or, as for Paul's frequent testimony about himself that he worked with his own hands so as not to burden anyone, he seems not to have imitated, according to the Lord's command, the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. But from these and similar passages of the Scriptures it is clear enough that our Lord does not disapprove of this, if someone provides these things in the human way; but only if someone serves God for the sake of these things, so that in his works he looks not to the kingdom of God but to the acquisition of these things. To this rule, then, the whole precept is reduced, that even in

the provision of these things we think of the kingdom of God, but in the warfare of the kingdom of God we do not think of these things.

CHAPTER XII.

Gird yourself, and put on your sandals. For "caliculae" or "caligae", as some codices have, in the Greek there is "sandals". We read in the Gospel that a kind of footwear was permitted to the apostles, certainly not without a figure of mystical meaning. For the apostles had the foot neither covered nor bare to the ground, so that they might be reminded that the gospel was neither to be hidden nor to be spent on earthly advantages, so that what is written might be fulfilled: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring good tidings of good things!

And he sat pro tribunali, and harangued them. By "pro tribunali" he means "on the tribunal". For it is the Latin custom, with this noun, to put "pro" to signify "on".

CHAPTER XIII.

The Holy Spirit said: Set apart for Me Barnabas and Paul for the work to which I have taken them. This seems to have been done after the death of Herod, who died in the third year of the emperor Claudius, which, according to the reliable witness of the chronicles, is the thirteenth year from the Lord's passion. Since, then, it is established that Paul with Barnabas was set apart for the apostolate so long a time after the Lord's passion was accomplished, it is plain indeed that they err greatly who composed or accepted the book on the death of holy Mary which we mentioned above. For it is written in that same fiction, as we have often recalled, that in the second year after the Lord's ascension, when the same most blessed Mother of God was about to die, the apostles, already then dispersed through the world to preach, were suddenly caught up in a cloud and all came together to visit her; among them also Paul, lately converted to the faith and soon made apostle of the gentiles with Barnabas. That this happened quite otherwise, that is, that he was ordained apostle not in the second year after the Lord's passion but in the thirteenth, everyone who believes blessed Luke understands; and thereby he finds that the aforesaid little book on the death of blessed Mary, since it plainly errs in its chronology, is of doubtful credit in the rest as well.

They found a certain man, a magician, a Jewish false prophet, whose name was Bar-Jesus. In the Greek there is more: Which is interpreted Elymas.

But Elymas the magician (for so his name is interpreted) withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. And here too in the Greek there is more: Because he listened to them gladly.

But Saul, who is Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, and the rest. Just as Barnabas' name was changed soon after his renunciation, so that instead of Joseph he was called Barnabas, that is, instead of "increased", "son of consolation". For after he had been increased and added to the number of the elect, at once, through the grace of the Spirit received, he merited both to be called and to be a son παρακλήσεως, that is, of consolation; so Saul, after receiving the rank of the apostolate, received the name of Paul. For because from proud he had been made humble, rightly instead of Saul

he was called Paul: for Saul is named after Saul the impious and persecuting king, but Paul from a humble spirit and from "little". For paululum is "a little". Hence, interpreting his own name in a manner, he himself said: For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God (1 Cor. 15:9).

And immediately there fell upon him a mist and darkness. The noun "darkness" is set in the Greek in the singular number, σκότος, which the Latin translator did not follow for this reason, that this noun in Latin has no singular number; and we have shown above that the same was likewise set there.

And destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot after about four hundred and fifty years, and after these things he gave judges. How this number can be understood we said in the preceding book of our exposition. But it must be known that in the Greek it is written otherwise: And destroying the nations in the land of Canaan, seven, he divided their land to them by lot. And after these things, for about four hundred and fifty years, he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. How this agrees with the statement contained in the book of Kings, that from the going out of Israel from Egypt until the building of the temple there were four hundred and ninety years, it is not within our power to explain, unless perhaps he followed the common report in speaking, as blessed Stephen is shown to have done in the address he held with the Jews concerning the burial of the twelve patriarchs

And God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. In this place too, concerning the reign of Saul, the apostle seems to have followed the opinion of the people, as we have already said in the preceding book; but as to what I said there, that Eusebius, following Josephus, gave forty years to the rule of Samuel and Saul, divided between them in equal number, afterwards, examining the histories of Josephus more carefully in due course, I saw that he himself did not write forty years for that aforesaid period, but assigned only twelve to Samuel and twenty years to Saul. And besides, having reread the books of the Chronicles more attentively, I noticed why Eusebius in this place refused to follow the authority of Josephus, just as he did not in the years of Joshua either, to whom, while Josephus allots twenty-six years, he himself thought rather that twenty-seven should be recorded. This, then, was the reason: that if he followed him, he could by no means have complete the prescribed number of four hundred and eighty years from the going out of Israel from Egypt until the temple began to be built, but would find in his codices ten years fewer for that same period. He suffered this because, following the Septuagint translators, he omitted to set in his Chronicles the judge Abialon, who ruled the people for ten years after Ibzan. But perceiving that ten years of his predetermined reckoning were lacking in the sacred history according to the edition which he followed, he took care to add them of his own, where it seemed convenient and less contrary to the sacred history. He adds, therefore, to the times of Joshua one year,

to the times of Samuel and Saul an eighth year, and, so that the number ten may be completed, he counts in the fourth year itself of Solomon's reign, in which the temple began to be built: which anyone who follows the Hebrew truth finds is not to be done. And as to what I myself wrote in the preceding book, that the judges ruled the people from Moses until Samuel for three hundred and ninety-six years, I followed the authority of the Chronicles, not yet noticing that that number of years is not consonant with the Hebrew truth.

He said: Whom do you think me to be? I am not he. In the Greek it is said more fully: I am not the Christ.

Men, brethren, children of the race of Abraham, and those among you who fear God. In the Greek "Hear" is found added.

And we declare to you that promise which was made to our fathers, that God has fulfilled it for our children. In the Greek it reads more consistently: That God has fulfilled it for their children. There follows:

Raising up Jesus, as also it is written in the second psalm. The holy Father Hilary recalls this place thus: "But that what is now in the psalm, You are My Son, today I have begotten You (Ps. 2:7), refers not to the birth from the Virgin, nor to the regeneration of the font, but to the Firstborn from the dead, is apostolic authority. For in the book of the Acts of the apostles it is said thus: We preach to you that promise which was made to our fathers; this God has fulfilled for our children, raising up our Lord Jesus Christ, as it is also written in the psalm: You are My Son, today I have begotten You, when He raised Him from the dead, never again to return to corruption (Acts 13:32–34). This voice of God the Father, then, according to the Apostle, belongs to the day of the resurrection." And a little later, having recalled the Apostle's sentence in which he says of Him: Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6–7), and the rest, he says: "And in the glory of God the Father, begotten today, He is born; that is, by the reward of death the assumption of the form of a servant is honoured with the form of God that abode before, and there comes about in time a new, yet not unaccustomed, birth, when, to resume the glory of God the Father, He Who from the form of God had been found in the form of a servant was born the firstborn from the dead."

Behold, you despisers, and wonder, and perish. In the Greek it is written thus: Hear, you despisers, and wonder; look, and perish.

Who, speaking, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. Here in the Greek there follows a verse which our codices do not have: And it came to pass that the word was spread abroad through the whole city; and then what we also have is added: On the following Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God.

CHAPTER XIV.

And the priest of Jupiter, who was before the city, bringing bulls and garlands before the gates, etc. It was the custom of the gentiles, as Pliny witnesses, that in honour of their gods

when sacrificing they should put on garlands, the victims being garlanded at the same time.

But certain Jews came there from Antioch and Iconium. In the Greek this narrative begins thus: And while they were staying and teaching, there came certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium.

CHAPTER XV.

Now therefore why do you tempt God, to put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? It is agreed that what was said, You shall not tempt the Lord your God (Matt. 4:7), is to be understood in many ways. He too, then, tempts God who strives to serve and please Him otherwise than He Himself commanded, who trusts that he can keep His commandments without the help of His grace. But blessed Peter wishes to lift from the necks of the disciples the most heavy yoke of the observance of the law, so as to lay on them the sweet yoke of Gospel freedom. Of which Paul too says to the sharers of the same grace: For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in Whom we cry, Abba, Father (Rom. 8:15).

That they abstain from the pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled and from blood. By "strangled" he means carrion, of which Ezekiel writes: The priests shall not eat anything that has died of itself or been taken by a beast, whether of birds or of cattle (Ezek. 44:31). Expounding this, Jerome says: "And according to the letter, to every chosen race, royal and priestly, which properly refers to Christians, who have been anointed with the spiritual oil of which it is written, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows, these precepts are fitting: that they should not eat carrion, whether of birds or of cattle, whose blood has by no means been poured out, which in the Acts of the apostles is called strangled; and which the Epistle of the apostles from Jerusalem warns must necessarily be observed; and what is taken by a beast, because that too is likewise strangled; and he condemns the priests who, among thrushes, fig-peckers, dormice and other things of this kind, keep these rules only with greed of the gullet."

They have troubled you, subverting your souls, to whom we gave no command. In the Greek there is more: Subverting your souls, saying: You must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no command.

Who have given up their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Greek is added: "unto every trial".

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. In the Greek it is written: For it has pleased the Holy Spirit and us.

They were sent away in peace by the brethren to those who had sent them. For what is "to those who had sent them", in the Greek there is "to the apostles".

CHAPTER XVI

And taking him, he circumcised him because of the Jews. It is rightly asked why the Apostle, who circumcised Timothy, refused to circumcise Titus, as he himself writes to the Galatians. But it must be understood that he circumcised Timothy because of the scandal of the Jews, so that through

he himself might show that he did not condemn the sacraments of the Mosaic law, but did not impose them on the gentiles as necessary for salvation. But after he had circumcised Timothy, some of the Jews, who wished the gentiles to be circumcised for this reason, that they said there could be no salvation for them without those sacraments, began to boast and to say: "For Paul too holds this, which we also say, that without these sacraments there can be no salvation. For if he does not believe this, why did he circumcise Timothy?" When Paul had heard this, he who had done it in freedom, not of necessity, on account of the scandal of the Jews, not on account of Timothy's salvation, saw that they had taken occasion for another preaching and for stirring up an evil suspicion against Paul, and he would not circumcise Titus. It is plain, therefore, why he willed the one and why he would not the other: the one he willed on account of the scandal of the Jews, the other he would not on account of the occasion given to those who believed amiss.

And a certain woman, named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of the Thyatirans, one who worshipped God, heard, etc. "Purpuraria" means a woman who sells purple, just as we find it put in another translation too, which in Greek is called πορφυρόπωλις. And fittingly is the woman who first believed in Illyricum, at the Apostle's preaching, said to be a seller of purple. For she signifies the Church, which is wont, as it were, to sell purple, because she does not hesitate to give her own blood for Christ, that through this she may be able to purchase eternal life. For purple rightly signifies the shedding and the colour of blood, and does so by the very property of its nature, in that it is made from the blood of shellfish. And Lydia compelled the Apostle with his companions to enter her house and to stay there, because the Church received with the inward devotion of the heart the preaching of the Gospel rejected by the Jews.

And it came to pass, as we were going to prayer, that a certain girl having a spirit of Python met us, etc. He who mercifully united the believing seller of purple to the members of the holy Church, He Himself soon after, judging strictly, deprived of her wicked art the pythoness who was proclaiming the mighty works of God with an unclean mouth. For this is that power which the holy apostles received from the Lord, when He says: "Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matt. 18:18). As for what I wrote in the former book, that "python" could signify in Hebrew "mouth of the abyss", I wrote what I found in the book of Hebrew names. But let the reader know that this name is Greek, and has been interpreted forcibly according to the Hebrew tongue, which Jerome himself, the interpreter of the Hebrew names, did not pass over in silence, as though it were called "Fython": for the Hebrews do not have the letter p, but in barbarian words they use f for it. Indeed it should be noted that in this reading, where it is written "a girl met us", in place of what is in Latin obviare, in the Greek it is written ὑπαντῆσαι; which I have thought worth recalling for this reason, that the reader may observe that the Lord's feast which is called the Ὑπαντή of the Lord took its name in Greek from this, that when the Lord was brought into the temple Simeon and

Anna, and the other faithful who were there, and His elect, had come to meet Him with devout heart and homage.

And when it was day, the magistrates sent the lictors. Those were called lictors who were in charge of punishing the guilty. Hence in Greek too they are called ῥαβδοῦχοι, from the rod. For the Greeks call a rod ῥάβδος; and Hilary mentions this office in his exposition of the Apostle's saying, in which he says: "What will you? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in the spirit of meekness?" (1 Cor. 4:21). "Did Paul," he says, "have a praetor's right, that he should threaten with the rod and come to the Church of Christ with the office of a lictor?"

CHAPTER XVII.

And when they had not found them, they dragged Jason and certain brethren to the rulers of the city. In the Greek it is written: "And certain other brethren"; from which it is to be understood that Jason too was a brother, that is, faithful to Christ.

Many indeed of them believed, and of honourable women of the gentiles, and men not a few. Some manuscripts, following the Greek exemplar, have it better and more consistently: "And of men not a few."

And some said: What would this word-sower say? Concerning this name Saint Augustine says: "We read," he says, "that the apostle Paul was called a sower of words. It was said indeed by mockers, but it is not to be rejected by believers. For he was in truth a sower of words, but a reaper of morals. And we too, though so very small and in no way to be compared with his excellence, sow the word of God in the field of God, which is your heart, and look for a rich harvest from your morals."

And He made of one every race of men. As to his saying "of one", it is plain that he means "of one man". But it is had more fully in the Greek: "He made of one blood", which no one doubts signifies ⟨the same⟩. For by the name of blood he signifies the propagation of the flesh; and by flesh, in the usual manner of the Scriptures, he wishes man to be understood, according to that saying of the Psalmist: "To Thee shall all flesh come" (Ps. 64:3).

CHAPTER XVIII.

And departing thence he entered into the house of a certain man named Titus Justus. The name Justus is written in the Greek too, because either this was the man's own name, or he was so surnamed by the Romans who knew him, on account of the merit of his justice. But it is not to be thought that this is Titus, the disciple of the apostle Paul, to whom he himself wrote an Epistle, and whom he ordained bishop of the Cretans. For that Titus was with him long before this time, when he came from Antioch to Jerusalem over the question of circumcision, with Barnabas still accompanying him. For the same Paul says to the Galatians: "Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me, and I conferred with them the Gospel which I preach among the gentiles" (Gal. 2:1–2). For he conferred with them the Gospel which he was preaching, carefully inquiring in the council of the apostles whether he did rightly in preaching that the gentiles could attain salvation through the baptism of faith without circumcision; not

that he himself was in any doubt about this matter, but that the minds of the doubters might be strengthened by the authority of the apostolic synod.

And Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his house, etc. This is believed to be the Crispus whom Paul, writing to the Corinthians, indicates was baptized by himself: "I give thanks to God," he says, "that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius" (I Cor. 1:14).

And all of them, seizing Sosthenes, the ruler of the Synagogue, beat him before the judgement seat. In the Greek it is better written: "And all the Greeks, seizing Sosthenes." For when the Jews had been driven from the judgement seat with ignominy, the gentiles, beating their ruler too, heaped greater insult upon him.

Bidding farewell to the brethren he went away into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila, who had shorn his head in Cenchreae, etc. It seems to be said ambiguously whether Paul or Aquila had his head shorn at Cenchreae; but the priest Jerome, as we showed more fully in the preceding book, plainly understands this as said of Paul. For having set down this passage in his letter to Augustine, he at once went on and said: "Granted that there, in the circumcision of Timothy, the same man was compelled by fear of the Jews to do what was lawful, why did he let his hair grow by a vow, and afterwards shear it at Cenchreae according to the law?" If we wish to follow his sense in this place, we nowhere at all read that Aquila was shorn. If we say that in this place Aquila was shorn, there remains at the end of this little book the place where we read that Paul too was shorn, or shaved. But those are deceived by a fault in the manuscript who say that Aquila was shorn together with Priscilla his wife. For in the Greek it is plainly κειράμενος, that is, "shorn", it is had in the singular number, and "he had a vow", not "they had", is thought to be taken either of Paul or of Aquila.

For he vigorously refuted the Jews, publicly showing through the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. In the Greek it is written thus: "Showing publicly and from house to house"; which is the mark of the best teacher, so to teach the many in general as not to cease from manfully exhorting each one.

CHAPTER XIX.

He separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of a certain Tyrannus, and this went on for three years, etc. At this time, while Paul was staying at Ephesus, he is said to have written the first Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he also mentions Priscilla and Aquila, saying: "Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church in their house" (I Cor. 16:19). By which word this too is shown, that not only did they serve Christ faithfully, but they also had a congregation of the faithful in their house. The second Epistle he is said to have written when he was at Troas. Further, reason makes plain that the Epistle to the Romans was written afterwards. For he himself testifies that he wrote it as he was setting out for Jerusalem.

So that even handkerchiefs or aprons were carried from his body to the sick. Many of us do not know what "semicinctia" signify; but Gregory, who is now bishop of the apostolic see, when

was still archdeacon, wrote back among other things to a friend from Britain who asked about it this too, that it is a kind of cloth which the Hebrews use on the head.

CHAPTER XX.

And there accompanied him Sosipater, son of Pyrrhus, of Beroea. It is he that is of Beroea, not this one of Beroea. But in the Greek more is had: "And there accompanied him as far as Asia."

And overcome by sleep he fell from the third storey. For "third storey" in the Greek is written τριστέγου; which I wished to recall for this reason, that the reader may be able to know what that is in Genesis which is commanded concerning the making of the ark: "You shall make in it upper rooms and third storeys" (Gen. 6:16); for in Greek στέγη means "roof", and τρίστεγα "threefold roofs".

Having taken him in, we came to Mitylene. We wrote in the first book, following Plinius Secundus, that Mitylene is an island over against Asia; but the same Pliny also writes in another place that Mitylene is a city in the island of Cyprus. Both of which are to be believed true; yet Paul with his companions came now not to the city of Cyprus but to the island of Asia. For long after this, and after he had travelled through many regions, Cyprus is said to have come into sight, but he did not enter it.

For he was hastening, if it were possible for him, to keep the day of Pentecost at Jerusalem. In the Greek is written "the day of Pentecost", that is, of the fiftieth. Note, therefore, that both the season of Easter and that of Pentecost were celebrated in the very times of the apostles. But whether, among the Jews who were zealous for the law, they were celebrated on the day on which the lamb was sacrificed in Egypt and on which the law was given on Mount Sinai, or rather on the day of the Lord's resurrection and of the coming of the Holy Spirit, let those who know say. It is certain, however, that the apostle Peter celebrated Easter at Rome on the Lord's day of Christ's resurrection; it is certain that the evangelist Mark, sent by him, taught this in Egypt.

CHAPTER XXI.

And entering into the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, we abode with him, etc. On account of the first office of preaching he deserved to be called evangelist, although all were doing this. His house and that of his daughters remained in the same city for a long time from then on. Indeed Jerome too mentions it in the History of Saint Paula, when he described her coming to Caesarea: "In which (he says) she saw the house of Cornelius become a Church of Christ, and the little dwelling of Philip and the chamber of the four virgin prophetesses."

But as touching those of the gentiles who have believed, we have written, deciding that they should abstain from idols, from sacrifice, etc. In the Greek it is had more distinctly: "But as touching the men who have believed, we have written, deciding that they should keep no such thing, save that they keep themselves from things offered to idols", etc. Therefore the Jews who believed in Christ at that time were not forbidden to walk according to the custom of the law, while the temple and their religion still stood, though they were to have salvation in the sacraments of the new testament alone; but those who believed from among the gentiles, and had been instructed in the sacraments of the Gospel, were forbidden to take up the sacraments of the law

to be converted; who are nevertheless commanded diligently to observe those commandments of the law which pertain to the formation of morals and the cleansing of the heart, such as: "You shall not covet" (Rom. 7:7). This was the fourth apostolic synod held at Jerusalem. For the first was about the election of the twelfth apostle in place of Judas; the second about the election of the seven deacons; the third about circumcision, that it should not be imposed on believers from among the gentiles; this fourth was held about believers from among the Jews at that time, that they should not be forbidden, where necessity required, to be initiated even in the ceremonies of the law, namely to avoid the scandal of those who thought that they had condemned the Mosaic decrees as though they were the doctrines of idolatry; and that they had been accustomed to do this even before is proved above all by the circumcision of Timothy.

He commanded him to be brought into the camp. Both in this place and in this whole narrative, wherever the name "castra" is put, it is to be pointed out that in the Greek it is put in the singular: which the Latin interpreter preferred to put in the plural for this reason, lest, if he put it in the singular, he should send the reader's sense far off to something else, and cause a fortified place to be understood instead of an assembly of an army and soldiers. So also in the psalm where it is said: "And they fell in the midst of their camp" (Ps. 77:28); in the Greek παραβολῇ is written, in the singular number.

And when he came to the steps, it fell out that he was carried, and the rest. He means steps not of descent from the temple, but of ascent into the camp. Which is plain from the Greek, where it has ἀναβαθμός, not καταβαθμός: that is, "ascent", not "descent".

I am indeed a man, a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a burgess of no mean city. For "burgess" some manuscripts have "citizen", which is rendered from the one Greek word πολίτης, a name derived from the city, which in Greek is called πόλις. Hence that which the Apostle says: "But our conversation is in heaven" (Phil. 3:20), some have interpreted: "But our burgess-right is in heaven." And Jerome, writing to Heliodorus, put it thus: "Because he wished nothing else to be understood by burgess-right than the life of a citizen, which in Greek is called πολίτευμα."

CHAPTER XXII.

Instructed according to the truth of the law of the fathers, being zealous. In the Greek more is had: "Being zealous for God", according to that saying to the Romans: "For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2).

Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? In the Greek, in this place too, there is added: "It is hard for you to kick against the goad."

And they that were with me saw indeed the light. And in the Greek more is had: "And they were made afraid."

And it came to pass, when I was come back to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I was in a stupor of mind, and saw Him. For "stupor of mind" some manuscripts have "an excess of mind", others "fear", others "estrangement". For what in Greek is called "ecstasis" is rendered variously in Latin. Which word is also put above in the vision of Peter, when he was to be called out to teach Cornelius.

For an ecstasy fell upon him, and he saw heaven opened. And the mind of the praying apostles was estranged, but from the lowest things to the highest, not that they might stray, but that they might see.

With a great sum I obtained this citizenship. For "civitas" the Greek has πολιτείαν: which signifies citizenship, that is, the common life among citizens, or the administration of the commonwealth, rather than a city. For the tribune had not bought the Roman city, to be its owner, but a share in the Roman citizenship, to be a partaker of it. But Paul was all the more a Roman citizen, because he had this not by purchasing but by being born.

The tribune also was afraid, after he learned that he was a Roman citizen. For "civis" the same word is put in the Greek as above for "municeps", that is, πολίτης.

CHAPTER XXIII.

And they bound themselves under a vow, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. "They vowed" signifies "they cursed". For in place of this word in the Greek is written ἀνεθεμάτισαν; but in what follows, where they said: "We have vowed ourselves under a vow to taste nothing", in the Greek is written ἀναθέματι ἀνεθεματίσαμεν. How great a severity this word carries, those know who by the priestly anathema are estranged from the fellowship of Christ and of the Church.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Now after many years I came to my nation to bring alms, and to make offerings and vows. The alms pertain to what he had brought for the needs of the saints, of which he makes frequent mention in his Epistles; but the offerings and vows to what he had offered to God in the temple at the persuasion of James and the elders. Although in the Greek "vows" are not added. Though, then, Luke did not say in the order of his history that Paul came from Greece to Jerusalem with alms for Christ's poor, yet from the words which he reports him to have spoken he shows that he did this.

CHAPTER XXV.

But Festus answered that Paul was kept at Caesarea, and that he himself would set out very shortly. By "maturius" he certainly means "more quickly", although sometimes a thing is said to be done "maturius" which is done more slowly and with ripeness of counsel. For in the Greek is written ἐν τάχει, that is, "in quickness".

When Agrippa and Bernice had come with great pomp, etc. For "ambitio" in the Greek is written φαντασία, by which name is signified the manifold array and the pomp of the royal office, by which, as it goes about him, that is, surrounds him on every side, he is attended.

CHAPTER XXVI.

That according to the most certain sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. For "sect" the Greek has "heresy". From which it is proved that at that time even a good sect bore this name among the Greeks, which now among us only a bad one is accustomed to bear.

CHAPTER XXVII.

And when it was decided that he should sail into Italy, and

that Paul be handed over with the other prisoners to a centurion. In the Greek it reads more consistently: "And when it was decided that we should sail into Italy, they handed over Paul and certain other prisoners to a centurion."

And sailing over the sea of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Lystra, which is in Lycia. For Lystra, in the Greek "Smyrna" is put, for which Jerome in the book of Hebrew names puts "Myra": which I think is found so in some manuscripts for this reason, that μύῤῥα is called "smyrna" in Greek. So too in the psalm, where we sing: "Myrrh, and stacte, and cassia" (Ps. 44:9), in the Greek it is written thus: "Smyrna, and stacte; and cassia."

We came to a certain place which is called Good Havens. These are "of good havens", not "of this good haven".

And he believed the shipmaster rather. In Greek the master of a ship is called "naucleros".

If by any means, reaching Phoenice, they might winter there, a harbour of Crete looking towards the south-west wind and towards the north-west wind. The wind Africus, which in Greek is called λίψ, blows between the southern quarter and the western, inclining; but Corus between the north and the west, though bent more to the west. It is clear, then, that since the province of Phoenice had Crete to the west, the harbour of that same Crete therefore looked from some of its parts towards Africus, and from others towards Corus; and so, whether Africus or Corus blew, loosing their cable from Crete they could reach Phoenice. But even if the south wind itself, that is, the noonday wind, were blowing, they would nonetheless have been able to sail to Phoenice by a twofold setting of the rudders and a bellying of the sails, had not the divine judgements stood in the way. Hence it is added next:

And when the south wind blew, thinking that they had their purpose, etc., we were scarcely able to secure the skiff. We wrote in the first book, following Isidore, that a skiff is a light little boat woven of wicker and covered with raw hide; but afterwards, running through the writings of others, we found that little boats hollowed out of a single tree are also called skiffs, which the Greeks call μονοξύλας.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

For kindling a fire they refreshed us all. In the Greek is written: "They received us all." Which

we too think was at first so translated into Latin, but altered through the negligence of copyists.

And it came to pass that the father of Publius lay sick with fevers and dysentery. Dysentery is a disorder of the intestines, an ailment with ulceration, in that there is discharged a bloody or bilious evacuation, or some other alteration of the humour; but that which shows a black evacuation from the beginning is judged by the ancients to be harmful. For Hippocrates says thus in the Aphorisms: « Dysentery beginning from black bile is deadly. » There follows for the sufferers a continual purging of the lower belly, sometimes green, sometimes mucous: they also pass scrapings with drops of blood, with griping of the intestine and the navel; they suffer sleeplessness and loathing of food, frequently also a slight fever, such as the father of Publius here is related to have suffered; sometimes also a prolapse of the rectum occurs, especially in infants: it is brought on sometimes by a chill, or by the corruption of the sharper humours. Gregory too mentions this disease in the fifth book of his Histories, saying thus: « In the times of the emperor Tiberius the dysenteric disease seized almost the whole of Gaul. For those who suffered from it had a violent fever with vomiting and excessive pain of the kidneys, heaviness of the head or of the neck; and what was thrown up from the mouth was of a saffron colour, or at any rate green. By many it was asserted to be a hidden poison; but herbs that cure poisons, taken in drink, brought help to very many. »

And he remained two whole years in his own hired lodging, and received all who came in to him, preaching the kingdom of God. Jerome mentions this place thus in the letter to Lucinius: « Paul enters Rome in chains, so that he may make free those bound by the errors of superstition; he remains in a hired lodging for two years, so that he may render to us the eternal gift of both instruments » By this exposition he taught that the other things also which are written in this volume, whether about the apostle Paul himself or about any others, not only show us beforehand, on the surface of the letter, the fruit of the Church's teaching, but also, if one understands them perfectly, have a marrow pregnant with the power of spiritual sense.

END OF THE BOOK OF RETRACTATION.