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 22: On the husbandmen who kill those sent to them to ask for the fruits, and on the guests invited without distinction, and the wedding garment.
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Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and the rest. The whole question is plain. For even the chief priests and Pharisees themselves understood that this was said of them, and were kindled to anger. But the proper meaning of the persons and the comparisons of the things must be brought out. By the householder here we understand God the Father, who planted the people of Israel to yield the best fruits; who shut them in within His own borders by the sanctification of the fathers’ name, that is, by the nobility of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as by a hedge of particular protection; who fitted the prophets as a kind of winepresses, into which a certain richness of the fervent Holy Spirit might flow like new wine; and who built in the tower the height of the Law, which might both rise from the ground and carry them up to heaven, and from which the coming of Christ might be watched for. In the husbandmen is the likeness of the chief priests and Pharisees, to whom the power of teaching over the people was entrusted.
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In the servants who were sent to receive the fruits is the various and often repeated going forth of the prophets. And the sending again of more than the first is that time when, after the preaching of single prophets, a great number of prophets together was sent forth; and at different times they were beaten and stoned and killed, as they asked for the fruits of a people that had been trained and taught. In the son sent last of all is both the coming and the Passion of our Lord: who was cast out of Jerusalem, as out of the vineyard, to the sentence of condemnation. And the counsel of the husbandmen, and their presuming on the inheritance once the heir was killed, is the empty hope that the glory of the Law could be kept when Christ was slain. In the return of the householder is the glory, at the time of judgment, of the Father’s majesty present in the Son. And in the answer of these chief priests and Pharisees themselves, the inheritance of the Law is given more worthily to the apostles. But this Son is the stone rejected by the builders, and raised to the top of the corner, and marvellous in the eyes of all, and the joining of the side and of both buildings between the Law and the Gentiles.
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The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding, and so on. This parable too must be divided by times and distinguished by persons. And the understanding of the person of the king and the son is plain. But that the father made the marriage for the son, and invited in this way, is a new turn. For making a marriage belongs to the one who brings it about and to its time. But here the marriage is the mystery of the heavenly life and of the eternal glory to be taken up in the resurrection. Rightly, then, was it made by the Father: because the fellowship of this eternity, and the espoused union of the new body, was already held perfected in Christ. And in this place we shall give the same warning as in the one above, where the matter of divorce was treated: that the things signified about the reason of the resurrection should be carefully considered, and that what was said in the person of Adam to Eve, since it is a great mystery, should not be carelessly passed over.
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Those who are reminded that they should come, the guests bidden before, are the people of Israel: for it was called through the Law to the glory of eternity. The servants sent to call the bidden guests are the apostles: for it was their proper office to remind those whom the prophets had invited. And those who are sent again with the terms of the commandments are apostolic men and the successors of the apostles. And the fatted oxen are the glorious likeness of the martyrs, who were sacrificed for the confession of God as a chosen offering. And the fatlings are spiritual men, birds fed as it were with heavenly bread for flying, who will fill the rest with the abundance of the food they have received. For when all these have now been made ready, and gathered into the number of the multitude well-pleasing to God, the glory of the heavenly kingdom is announced as a marriage.
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But they so neglected their warning too, that some of them were taken up with the ambition of the world, as with a farm; and more were held back by trading, through the desire for money. And the rest treated the servants who were sent despitefully and slew them, which was fulfilled in the apostles themselves. But a fitting vengeance follows the crime of so monstrous a deed. The heavenly armies, sent forth, will burn their whole company by the judgment of God, and set them alight with the flames of eternal fire: because, against all feeling of humanity, they raged with the hatreds of murderers.
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And since He is speaking of the time of judgment and resurrection, He has turned the same discourse to the gathering of the Gentiles. For those who had been bidden first having been found unworthy, He bids them go out into the highways. For by the gift of grace the crimes of the former life are passed over. For we have very often pointed out that the way is to be understood as the time of the world. And so they are bidden to go out into the highways, because for all men what is past is forgiven. Then He bids that all be called to the marriage without any exception, and bad come together with good. The calling ought indeed to have made them good, because it is holy, and has proceeded from the best disposition of Him who invites; but through the fault of an unamended will there is a difference among those called.
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And because pretence is wont to have the greatest skill in deceiving men, and though it may deceive us, either through the secrecy of another’s mind or through the simplicity of our own judgment, yet it cannot be hidden from God: therefore God, entering this company of the happy resurrection, and seeing a man sitting at meat without a wedding garment, asks how he came in. Had He laid down what the guests should wear? Then, when He had commanded that all whatever should be invited, how could one have clothing for them all? Or if there was a fixed dress usual for guests at weddings, he could have been stopped by those who invited and by the servants. But because it is not for all to recognise the wicked, and human simplicity hardly perceives the fraud of a feigning mind, God alone therefore found this man wicked and unworthy of the wedding company. And the wedding garment is the glory of the Holy Spirit and the whiteness of the heavenly garb: which, received by the confession of a good answer, is to be kept spotless and whole until the company of the kingdom of heaven. So this man is taken away and cast into outer darkness, because many are called, but few are chosen. So it is not that there are few invited, but that there are rare chosen: because in Him who invites without exception there is the kindness of a goodness offered to all; but among those invited there is the choosing of uprightness by the merit of judgment.