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 5: On prayer and fasting, on treasure in heaven, on the light of the body, on the two masters, on food and clothing, on the birds and the lilies of the field and the grass, on the care of the day, and on the mote and the beam in the eye.
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We are bidden, too, to pray with the door of our chamber shut; and yet we are taught to pour out prayer in every place: and the prayer of the saints has been received from among wild beasts, from prisons and flames, and from the depth of the sea and the belly of the beast. So we are warned to enter, not the hidden part of the house, but the chamber of our heart, and, with the secret place of our mind shut, to pray to God, not with much speaking but with the conscience: because the deed surpasses every word that is said. From the necessity of commenting on the mystery of prayer, however, Cyprian, a man of holy memory, has set us free. Tertullian too wrote a most fitting volume on the subject; but the error into which the man afterwards fell has taken away authority from writings that deserve approval.
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Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast, and so on. He teaches that the profit of fasting must lie outside any boasting of a worn-out body, and that the favour of the Gentiles is not to be courted by a show of ill-usage; but that all fasting is to be set in the beauty of holy works. For that oil is the fruit of mercy is the heavenly and prophetic word. So our head, that is, the understanding of our life, is to be adorned with works of goodness, because all understanding is in the head; and the filth on the face is to be washed away, that there may be nothing loathsome from our vices, but rather the grace of brightness in our meeting with others: and so, washed into the splendour of a good conscience, and anointed into the grace of works of mercy, our fasts may commend us to God. For the rest, if in our fasting we avoid the knowledge of men by anointing our heads, we shall only be the more laughed at, and the more found out.
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Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, and the rest. Leaving aside, then, all care for human glory and wealth, He shows that we must take up the whole care of pleasing God: because either the faults of our bodies or the detraction of the envious spoil human praise; and this treasure of money is endangered either by loss or by theft. But heavenly praise is eternal, neither to be taken away by the theft of one who creeps in, nor to be eaten away by the moth or the rust of envy: our heart will have its seat wherever its treasure has gone, and the light of our understanding will be either with money, to its ruin, or with God, for ever.
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The light of the body is the eye. The sense is self-contained. For by the office of the eye’s light He has expressed the light of the heart. If this remains single and clear, it will give the brightness of eternal light to the body, and will pour the splendour of its own origin over the corruption of the flesh. But if it is darkened by sins and evil in will, the nature of the body will be subject to the vices of the mind. And if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great must be the darkness of the darkness itself? For even now the vicious origin of the earthly flesh is wont dangerously to lord it over the nobility of the soul, and the sins of the body grow far heavier still if they are helped by the desires of the soul; and so our bodies become dark beyond their own nature if the light of the mind is put out in them; whereas, if we keep that light through singleness of spirit, it must needs light up the body also with its light.
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No man can serve two masters, and so on. The service of two masters is a faithless one, nor can the same man give equal care to the world and to God. For there must be hatred towards one and love towards the other: because the same work does not suit the will of different masters, nor can the poor in spirit who please God be fitted for the ambitious boasting of this world.
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Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought in your heart what ye shall eat; nor for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Through the whole discourse before this He had taught contempt of the world and confidence in what is to come. For in bidding us be ready for wrong, willing for loss, careless of revenge, indiscriminate in loving, and unconcerned for human glory, He labours to confirm us in the hope of eternal good things. For love of the present and despair of the future make many men uncertain: it either takes them with its enticements or confounds them with unbelief. So He wills that the kingdom of heaven — which the prophets announced, John preached, and our Lord declared to be set in Himself — should be hoped for without any wavering of an uncertain will: otherwise there is no justification by faith, if faith itself becomes doubtful. He commands, then, that there be no care for clothing and food, saying that the life is more precious than meat and the body than food.
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And indeed it is a fine thing to despise present things and to spend one’s care only on divine things: but the discourse goes deeper, and the meaning that lies beneath the words reaches into the understanding of a heavenly saying. The Lord bade treasure be laid up in heaven, and promised splendour to the body also from the light of the eye, and testified that no one can please two masters; and after this He says, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought in your heart what ye shall eat; nor for your body, what ye shall put on. What follows does not fit well enough with what was set out before. Can a servant of one master not also be anxious about clothing and food? When the light of the eye is dulled by ill health, will the body be darkened? Or what light of the body can come from the eye? Can nakedness or hunger alone lay up treasure in heaven?
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But because the understanding of unbelievers is corrupt in its care for things to come, as they cavil about what form the bodies will have in the resurrection, and what nourishment will sustain them into the substance of eternity; and because, out of the difficulties of useless questions, a sort of reason has been sought for enjoying present pleasures, and so, lingering in a useless fear about the reverence of God, they pass over into the joys of the world, and so it comes about that the service of one man to two masters is faithless; therefore, out of the deepest feeling of love, having first foretold the gravest peril of distrust, He warns thus: Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? In the sayings of God there is truth, and all the power of making things is in the word. So neither is what He has promised doubtful, nor is what He has spoken without effect. There is nothing which is not bodily in its substance and creation: the elements of all things, whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible or invisible, have been formed. For even the forms of souls, whether they possess bodies or are exiled from bodies, yet obtain a bodily substance of their nature; because everything that has been created must needs be in something. And so God, rebuking the folly of a most useless question, does not allow our hope of what is to come to linger in anxiety over food and clothing in the resurrection, since soul and body are to be set in the substance of eternity: lest an insult be offered to Him who restores things so much more precious, that is, the body and the soul, by supposing that He will not provide the lighter things.
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Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Under the name of birds He encourages us by the example of the unclean spirits: to whom, without any labour of seeking and gathering, the substance of life is nevertheless given by the power of the eternal counsel. And to show that this must be referred to the unclean spirits, He added, Are ye not much better than they? showing, by the superiority of the comparison, the difference between wickedness and holiness.
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Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? He has confirmed faith in our living substance by the proof given in the spirits; and the notion of our future form He has left to the judgment of common understanding. For since He will raise up the diversity of all the bodies that have drawn breath into one perfect and complete man, and He alone is able to add one cubit, or a second, or a third, to each man’s height: with how great an insult to Him do we doubt about the raiment, that is, about the form of our bodies! — He who, to make every man equal and of one form, will add to men’s bodies as much measure as is needed.
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Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these, and so on. The lilies toil not, neither do they spin; and Solomon, a great prophet, and dear to God for the wisdom he loved, was not arrayed with their glory. But lilies are born rather than clothed. And a covering is the veil of a body, not the body itself. And if this is referred to the sense of human understanding, the whiteness of a garment could have rivalled the colour of the lily. But by the lilies that toil not and spin not we must understand that the brightness of the heavenly angels is signified: on whom the whiteness of glory has been bestowed by God, apart from any learning of human knowledge, and apart from the wages of their own work; that they might not be thought to have anything from their own labour or skill. And since in the resurrection men will be like the angels, He wished us, by the example of the angels’ brightness, to hope for the covering of heavenly glory. And it is in the nature of this plant to be most fittingly compared with the heavenly substances of the angels. For when it has flowered, and is torn from the stock of the root held in the ground, though it may be thought to have withered, it hides the power of its nature, and when the season returns it is clothed again with the beauty of its lily. For it flowers again and is restored out of itself; and what it is, it cannot owe either to the root or to the earth, since the sap that rises in it is its own. And so, though by the example of its yearly greenness, it imitates the power of its heavenly substance, since it is nourished into flower only by what it has received within itself. That is why the lilies toil not, neither do they spin: because the Powers of the angels, from the lot of their origin which they have obtained, receive the gift of always being.
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Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? He confirms the inviolable confidence of our faith by the authority of examples: so that it is a matter of so much the greater peril to doubt, the more earnest the care with which He has taken away every occasion of unbelief. The grass is not born in order to be given to the fire; nor is God’s particular care in clothing it in order that it may be burned: but we often find the Gentiles named by God under the name of grass. And grass is the plant which, when the flower of its strength has fallen, withers at the heat of the sun. So there is no rest for the Gentiles, nor will rest be given them by the short way of death, as they would have it: but a bodily eternity will be appointed for them too, so that in them there may be eternal fuel for eternal fire, and an everlasting punishment may be carried out on everlasting beings. If, then, a bodily eternity is granted to the Gentiles only that they may then be consigned to the fire of judgment, how profane it is for the saints to doubt the glory of eternity, when the work of eternity is given to the wicked for their punishment. He requires us, then, to place all our expectation in faith in His promises and in the might of His power: so that, leaving aside care for the things we need, we may look for all things rather from Him from whom we took the beginning of our life, and seek the kingdom of God by the service of our life. And this is the reward of those who live rightly and perfectly, that they are carried over out of the matter of this corruptible body into a new and heavenly substance, and earthly corruption is changed into heavenly incorruption. It belongs to the Gentiles, then, to be tormented with the care of this unbelief: for they are held fast by love of the world and taken up with the joys of the body, and no road into the heavenly kingdom through faith and the confession of God is sought or desired by them.
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Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. It is the common judgment that a day is a course of passing time lit by the light of the sun, which the night coming between divides, and by its coming puts day in place of day; and in “the morrow” is contained the meaning of time to come. So God forbade us to be anxious about the future. And the carelessness of an anxiety laid aside belongs not to negligence but to faith. For why should we be anxious for the morrow, when the morrow is anxious for itself? So the day itself, being anxious for us, drives away our anxiety. But anxiety, I think, is a feeling proper to man: for it is stirred up either by care, or fear, or the distress of grief. But a day is a course of time; and only things that have attained foresight receive the feeling of anxiety. The day, then, will be made out to be a living creature, which takes heed, and looks ahead, and cares; for which its own evil is sufficient, and which is not to be heaped up with a sin that befalls it from outside. But the nature of the thing does not allow us to ascribe a feeling of the mind to a day. So the day’s being anxious for itself, and its own evil being sufficient for it, and our being forbidden to be anxious for the morrow, are all contained under sayings of a heavenly meaning. We are bidden, then, not to doubt about things to come; for the evil of our life and the sins of the days in which we live are sufficient, so that all the thought and labour of our life should be spent upon cleansing these and deserving well; lest from distrust about things to come an inexpiable irreligion should be contracted as well: since, when our care has ceased, the things to come are themselves anxious in their own office, and the advance to eternal brightness is made ready for us, who are no longer anxious, by the providence of God’s goodness.
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Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged. God removes all office of judging entirely, and suffers none at all to be undertaken. But what follows is thought to conflict with what goes before, when He says, For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged. Yet above He says, Judge not, that ye be not judged. Is it wrong, then, to undertake the decision of a good judgment? On the contrary, He declares that men will be judged according to the manner of their judgment, and that to all it shall be measured by the kind of measure they have used. So there will never be good judgment, if there is to be no judging at all. But, as we have long since recognised above, nothing light or empty is handled in the words of God; and all the discourse here is beyond the understanding of Gentile ears. For He forbade judgment to be passed on His promises: because, as judgments among men are taken up about uncertain matters, so this judgment against God is undertaken out of uncertainty of feeling and opinion; and this He drives far from us, so that a steadfast faith may rather be kept. For it is not as in other matters, where it is a sin to have judged wrongly; but in these matters merely to judge God is the beginning of guilt.
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And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? and the rest. In what follows He taught that blasphemy against the Spirit alone will be beyond forgiveness, God granting pardon for all other sins. And sin against the Spirit is to deny to God the power of His might, and to take from Christ the substance of eternity, through whom, because God came into man, man in turn will come into God. So, as great as is the difference between a mote and a beam, so much does He show that sin against the Spirit exceeds the condition of other crimes: so that while unbelievers reproach others with the faults of the body, they do not first see in themselves the weight of the sin by which they doubt the promises of God, while the beam of unbelief lodges in their eye, as it were in the sight of their mind. For it often happens that we take to ourselves the authority of rebuking others without any example of our own amendment, and make a boast of healing another’s blindness while we ourselves are set in the darkness of a corrupted light: although it is hard for anyone to give what he lacks, and the best way is to teach by example rather than by words. Care must therefore first be taken of our own blindness: because it is in the nature of things that no one can become a teacher fit to clear the mote from his brother’s eye until he has cast out of the light of his own mind the beam of unbelief that weighs it down.