While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, due to the only English translation of this commentary being in copyright, it was machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Latin. It has not been checked by a human translator.
Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, written about 353–356, before his exile to the East. Chapter 16: On the sign of Jonas the prophet, and on the leaven of the Pharisees, on Peter’s confession and the Lord’s blessing, and on denying himself, for whoever would follow Christ.
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The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven, and the rest. The Pharisees and Sadducees come, insolent in their confidence in the Law, and, disdaining the mighty works that call to faith, they ask to be shown a sign from heaven. Seeing in Christ the lowliness of flesh and body, they disdain to receive teaching from the things He did in the guise of a man. Laughing at their insolence and emptiness, He answered that they were wont to make many guesses about the nature of the sky, when from a red sunrise or sunset they foretell fair weather or rain; but that they do not know the signs of the times, though the whole Law and the prophets signify the tokens of His coming by the wonder of the works He would do: so that, as the redness of morning or evening gave proof of the weather in the sky, so the tokens of His mighty works ought to have given a plain knowledge of the times.
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But He, who had arisen from heaven, appointed for them an earthly sign, so as to keep them within the confession of His bodily lowliness, saying that the sign of Jonas would be given. To him the Lord compares Himself, whom He had sent beforehand, in a like figure, to preach repentance to the Ninevites, for the working out of the Passion to come. For Jonas, while the winds raged, was cast out of the ship, and swallowed by the whale, and after three days cast out alive, not kept by the monster, not digested as its food; but, against the nature of the human body, he comes out whole and unhurt into the upper air by the power of the Lord’s foreshadowing. This, then, He shows to have been appointed as the sign of His power: that He, preaching the remission of sins through repentance, was to be cast out from Jerusalem or the Synagogue by the overmastering blast of unclean spirits, and delivered to the power of Pilate, that is, to the judgment of the world; and swallowed by death as by a monster of the same element; and after three days to come up out of it, alive and incorrupt, not held, against the condition of the man He had taken. So He willed that the things which, in the man taken from the Virgin’s conception, were full of divine powers, should be known and understood about Him both by the sign of the prophet and by the example of the man.
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And he left them, and departed. Not, as is read in other places, “He sent the multitudes away and departed”; but because the error of unbelief possessed the minds of these insolent men, it is written, not that He sent them away, but that He left them. And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. All obscurity about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees has been cleared up. And in the apostles being bidden to keep from it, they are warned not to mingle with the teaching of the Jews; because the works of the Law were appointed for the bringing about of faith and as a foreshadowing of the things that were to follow: so that those into whose times and age the truth had come should not think that any hope lay any longer in the likeness of the truth; lest the teaching of the Pharisees, which did not know Christ, should corrupt the effects of the truth of the Gospel.
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When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, and the rest. In the course of His discourse and His work He gives His disciples a fuller knowledge of Himself, and lays down a certain form and manner of understanding Him. And this is the true and inviolable faith: that from God, the God of eternity — to whom, because the Son has always been, both the right and the name of Father belong always; lest, if the Son were not always, He too should not always be Father — God the Son came forth, who has eternity from the eternity of the Father. And it was His will to be born, in whose power and might it lay to be born. So the Son of God is God from God, one in both: for He received the Godhead — theotes, which the Latins call deitas — of His eternal Father, from whom He came forth by being born. And He received that which He was: and the Word was born which was always in the Father. And so the Son is both eternal and born: because nothing was born in Him but what is eternal.
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That He then took a body and was made man is the perfect confession: because as eternity took the body of our nature, so it must be acknowledged that the nature of our body can take on the power of eternity. Because this is the highest good in the faith, then, He asks the disciples whom men said that He was; and He added, the Son of man. For this is the rule of confession to be held, that as we remember Him to be the Son of God, so we remember Him to be also the Son of man: because the one without the other gives no hope of salvation.
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When they had told the opinions of men about Him, which were various, He asks what they themselves think of Him. Peter answered, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. But Peter had weighed the terms of the question. For the Lord had said, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? And certainly the sight of His body showed Him to be the Son of man; but by adding whom do men say that I am, He signified that something besides what was seen in Him was to be understood; for He was the Son of man. What judgment of opinion about Himself, then, was He looking for? Not that, we think, which He had confessed of Himself: but what was being asked about was hidden — that to which the faith of believers had to stretch itself out.
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And Peter’s confession plainly won a worthy reward, because he had seen the Son of God in the man. Blessed is he, who is praised for having looked and seen beyond human eyes: beholding not that which was of flesh and blood, but discerning the Son of God by the revelation of the heavenly Father; and judged worthy to be the first to recognise what was of God in Christ. O happy foundation of the Church in the giving of a new name, and a rock worthy of its building, which should dissolve the laws of hell, and the gates of Tartarus, and all the bars of death! O blessed doorkeeper of heaven, to whose decision the keys of the eternal entrance are handed over, whose judgment on earth is an authority decided beforehand in heaven: so that what is either bound or loosed on earth obtains the same standing in heaven!
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He also charges the disciples to tell no man that He is the Christ: for others had to be the witnesses of His Spirit, that is, the Law and the prophets. But the testimony to the resurrection belongs to the apostles. And because the blessedness of those who know Christ in the Spirit has been shown, the danger of denying, in turn, His lowliness and His Passion is declared.
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For when He had begun to preach that He must go to Jerusalem, and then suffer many things of the elders of the people, and of the scribes and chief priests, and even be killed, and rise again after the third day, Peter took Him and said, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But He turned and said to Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me. As it is God’s gift to know Christ as God in the Spirit, so it is the devil’s work not to know Christ in the man. And it is a matter of the same danger either to deny the body without God, or to deny God without the body. For the body of this flesh is nothing to God in the eternity of the Spirit; but for the sake of man’s salvation Christ is in the body which He took from man.
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So after the preaching of the Passion the devil, taking his opportunity — for he had departed from Him for a season — because it seemed incredible enough to the apostles that He in whom God was should be capable of suffering, took this occasion of human unbelief and put the feeling of this opinion into Peter. And so he so abhorred the Passion as to say, Be it far from thee: a word that carries the cursing of things to be abhorred. But the Lord, knowing the craft of the devil’s art, says to Peter, Get thee behind me: that is, that he should follow Him by the example of His Passion. But turning upon him through whom this opinion was suggested, He added, Satan, thou art an offence unto me. For it is not fitting to think that the name of Satan and the reproach of being an offence were laid upon Peter after such great praises of the blessedness and power that had been granted him. But because all unbelief is the work of the devil, the Lord, offended by Peter’s answer, abhorred the author of this unbelief with the reproach of his name.
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Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and the rest. O blessed loss, and happy forfeit! The Lord willed us to grow rich by the loss of soul and body, and urges us to be like Him: because He, being set in the form of God, having become humble and obedient unto death, received the sovereignty of all the power that is in God. He is to be followed, then, with the cross taken up; and in His Passion He is to be accompanied, if not perhaps in fact, at least in will. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and, with the whole dominion of earthly power, brood over the wealth of the world, and lose his own soul, and suffer the loss of life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul, when it has been lost? For Christ will be here with the angels, rendering to each as they shall deserve. What shall we bring to buy life? Treasures, I suppose, made ready for future trading in earthly wealth, ambitious titles of rank and fame, or the old portraits of a pampered nobility? All these must be denied, that we may abound in better things: and Christ must be followed in contempt of all things, and the eternity of spiritual things must be bought with the loss of earthly things.