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 18: On the little children who were forbidden, and on taking up their humility; on plucking out the hand and the foot and the eye; on the lost sheep; on rebuking one’s brethren, first in private, then before two witnesses, and last before the Church; that we must always forgive; and on him who, having been forgiven his debt by his lord, takes his fellow-servant by the throat.
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At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? and the rest. The Lord teaches that none enter the kingdom of heaven unless they have turned back to the nature of children: that is, that the vices of our bodies and souls must be called back to childlike simplicity. And He called all believers children, through the faith that comes by hearing. For children follow their father, love their mother, do not know how to wish their neighbour harm, neglect the care of wealth; they are not insolent, they do not hate, they do not lie; they believe what is said, and hold what they hear to be true. And when the habit and the will of all these dispositions has been taken up in us, it makes the road to heaven open to us. We must go back, then, to the simplicity of infants: because, set in it, we shall carry about with us the likeness of the Lord’s humility.
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And if any receive such ones in the name of Christ, they will obtain the reward of having received Christ. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones, that is, shall bring upon them a stumbling-block of temptation, it were better for him that a millstone turned by an ass were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. So many and such great things are not compared without purpose: the millstone, and its being turned by an ass, and his being drowned in the sea with it, and this being better for him. By the common understanding of all, what is better is always profitable. What profit is there, then, in being drowned with an ass’s millstone hung about one’s neck? For so grievous a death will serve only for punishment, and I do not know how it will be profitable to seek what is the worst of evils. We must ask, then, what we ought to understand. The work of the mill is a labour of blindness: for the beasts are driven round in a circle with their eyes covered. And under the name of the ass we often find the Gentiles named. The Gentiles, then, do not know what they do; and, held in the work of their life, they are kept in the ignorance of a blind labour. But to the Jews the road of knowledge was given in the Law. If they offended the apostles of Christ, it would have been better for them to have been drowned in the sea with an ass’s millstone tied to their neck, that is, to remain sunk in the ignorance of the world under the labour of the Gentiles: because it would have been more tolerable for those not to have known Christ, than for these not to have received Him who was prophesied to them.
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Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! The lowliness of the Passion is an offence to the world. For human ignorance is held fast above all in this, that it will not receive the Lord of eternal glory under the unsightliness of the cross. And what is so perilous to the world as not to have received Christ? But under the naming of “that man” He marks the Jewish people as the author of this offence, through whom all this peril is brought upon the world, in that they deny Christ in His Passion, whom the Law and the prophets preached as One who would suffer. And He says that offences must needs come, because, for the mystery of restoring eternity to us, all the lowliness of the Passion had to be fulfilled in Him.
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We set out above that the names of kinship are contained in the cutting off of the hand or the foot: and so He signifies that the kindred of the Israelite race must be left behind, as by a kind of cutting off of members, because through it offences are brought upon the world.
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Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones which believe in me. He laid the closest bond of mutual love, above all towards those who had truly believed in the Lord. For the angels of the little ones daily see God: because the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. So the Son of man saves, and the angels see God, and the angels belong to the little ones. That the angels preside over the prayers of the faithful is settled authority. So the angels daily offer to God the prayers of those who are saved through Christ. It is perilous, then, to despise one whose desires and petitions are carried up to the eternal and invisible God by the eager service and ministry of angels.
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And to show that there is great joy in heaven at the return of man’s salvation, He set forth the example of a comparison: of one who left the ninety and nine sheep on the mountains and sought the one that was gone astray; and when it was found there was more joy than there had been in the safe keeping of the ninety and nine. The one sheep is to be understood as man, and under the one man the whole race is to be understood. For in the straying of the one Adam the whole race of men went astray; so the ninety and nine that did not go astray are to be thought of as the multitude of the heavenly angels, who in heaven have joy and care for man’s salvation. So it is Christ who seeks the man; and the ninety and nine that were left are the multitude of the heavenly glory, to which the straying man has been brought back with the greatest joy in the Lord’s body. Rightly, then, is this number both added to Abraham and completed in Sara by a letter: for from Abram he is named Abraham, and from Sarai Sara takes her name. For we are all in the one Abraham; and through us, who are all one, the number of the heavenly glory is to be filled up. And therefore the whole creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God, and groans and travails, so that the number, which was added to Abraham through alpha, and which was completed in Sara in alpha, may be filled up for the heavenly order by the increase of believers.
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Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault, and the rest. The Lord laid upon us that order of keeping charity which He Himself had kept in preserving Israel: for He bids that a brother who sins be rebuked and reproved by him alone against whom he has sinned. For He Himself rebuked the Jewish people, when it sacrificed to strange gods, by the coming of His majesty and by all the terror of His present power. And then, when that same people could not bear the coming of God as He drew near, though they were set outside the mountain, He commanded that one or two more should be brought to the disobedient, so that in the mouth of two witnesses the truth and certainty of the word might stand: because to insolent Israel the Law and the prophets and John were sent, and by these witnesses it was called upon to cease from sin; and the third time, by the very coming of the Lord, it was warned as before the assembly of the Church looking on; and when these rebukes had been tried in vain, it is disregarded, as of no more account than a publican or a heathen.
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And to strike the greatest fear, by which all might be held in check for the present, He laid down beforehand the unshakeable judgment of apostolic severity: that those whom they bind on earth, that is, leave tied in the knots of sins, and those whom they loose, that is, receive into salvation by the confession of pardon, are by the condition of the apostolic sentence either loosed or bound in heaven too.
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So much did He care for the concord of human peace, then, that He affirms that all things which are to be asked of God are to be obtained by the merit of unity; and promises that where two or three are gathered together in one spirit and will, there He will be in the midst of them. For He Himself, peace and charity, will set His seat and dwelling in good and peaceable wills.
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Then when Peter asked whether he should forgive a brother who sinned against him seven times, He answered, Not until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. In every way He trains us to the likeness of His own humility and goodness; and, for the softening and breaking of the stings of our turbulent motions, He confirms it by the example of His own readiness to be appeased: since He grants the pardon of all sins through faith. For the vices of our nature did not deserve indulgence. So all pardon is from Him: since He forgives even the sins that are against Himself, after the return of confession. A sevenfold punishment was appointed to be paid for Cain: but that sin was against a man; for the sin against his brother Abel had gone as far as murder. But in Lamech the punishment was appointed as far as seventy times seven; and in him, as we judge, the punishment was appointed for the authors of the Lord’s Passion. But the Lord, through the confession of those who believe, grants pardon for this crime, that is, through the gift of baptism He grants the grace of salvation to those who slandered and persecuted Him: how much more, He shows, ought we to grant pardon without measure or number, and not count how often we forgive, but cease to be angry with those who sin against us, however often the need for anger arises? This constancy of pardon surely teaches that there ought to be no time at all for anger with us: since God grants us the pardon of all sins whatever rather by His own gift than by our merit. Nor is it right that we should be shut in, by the rule of the Law, to a number in giving pardon, when through the grace of the Gospel it has been granted to us by God without measure.
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Moreover He set out the example of a comparison for the disposition of perfect goodness, in which the lord forgave the whole debt to a servant who had nothing to pay; and that servant, wringing from his fellow-servant the small sum owed to him, lost through this fault of his will the gift of his lord’s generosity and liberality. But the meaning of this comparison is complete, and has been set out in full by the Lord Himself.