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 7: On the leper whom He healed, on the tribune’s servant who was sick of the palsy, on Peter’s wife’s mother, and on many different healings.
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When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean, and the rest. At the beginning of this discourse we gave warning that no one should perhaps think that anything was to be taken from the truth of the events, if we taught that the events themselves contain within them the progress of what was to follow. For it takes nothing from the truth that the truth should be followed by a likeness of it. In the whole of the discourse before this, then, the Lord had handed down the precepts of faith; He had gone beyond the Law, and by going beyond it had signified that it was now useless and without effect. He had required the keeping of the commandments, having first commanded a most faithful hope in His promises. We must now consider, then, what He did first after this.
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A leper comes, asks to be cleansed, is cleansed by the power of the word together with a touch, and is bidden to keep silence; but yet to show himself to the priest, and to offer the gift which Moses commanded to be made for a testimony. In the leper, then, is shown the healing of the multitude that heard and believed and came down from the mountain with the Lord. Defiled by the corrupt stain of the body, and having heard the preaching of the kingdom of heaven, it asks to be healed; it is visited by the touch of a body, it is healed by the power of the Word; and silence is commanded, so that this salvation might be offered rather than sought; and he is bidden to show himself to the priests: so that He who was proclaimed in the Law might be seen in deeds and works, and the power of the word might be understood in that wherein the Law was weak; and that he who has been cleansed might offer to God the reward for the health he had received — not that the gift should be of birds, but that the man himself, cleansed from the filth of bodily sin, should pass over into a sacrifice to God: because what Moses commanded in the Law is a testimony, not the effect.
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And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a tribune, beseeching him, and saying, My servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, and so on. After the cleansing of the leper there follows the healing of the servant sick of the palsy. But what does it mean that the tribune, the servant’s master, declares himself not worthy that Christ should enter his house, see the servant, and bring help in person to one present; and that he has soldiers, and commands what he will, and that very many obey him, as one set in authority, and that in the same way the Lord can grant the healing by a word? Let it be enough for me to have stated that the tribune is the chief of the Gentiles who were to believe. Who this chief is, under whom many are set, let anyone who wishes to know read the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy, and Solomon’s book Ecclesiasticus, where they have said something about the dispersion of the nations: for us let the treatment be of the servant only.
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Next, in this servant, after the healing of the multitude that came down from the mountain, there follows, after the cure of the palsy, the salvation of the Gentiles. For the servant was lying unstrung in a mean and corruptible house, unworthy of the entrance of the Saviour, of whom nevertheless it stood in need. And the tribune knows that the servant can be healed by a word: because all the salvation of the Gentiles is of faith, and in the precepts of the Lord is the life of all men. The Gentiles, then, are to be thought of as lying in the world and unstrung by the diseases of sins, with all their limbs everywhere loosened, and made useless for the office of standing and of walking. And the mystery of their salvation is fulfilled in the tribune’s servant, yet without Christ’s going to enter the house. For though He dwelt in the world, yet He did not approach the vices and sins of the world.
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Then, marvelling at his faith, He says, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. This tribune was not of the Gentiles: how then was such faith not found in Israel, when he who believed was an Israelite? But so that this very truth might be the likeness of what was to come, the meaning of the word was set beneath it: that so great faith as is the Gentiles’ was not to be found in Israel, and that men from the farthest nations would rest with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. The truth of the healing was indeed made perfect in the servant according to the faith of the one who believed; but the working of present things is shown to serve also as the image of things to come, when, the tribune believing and the servant being saved, such faith was not found in Israel, and fellowship with Abraham in the kingdom of heaven is appointed for the Gentiles.
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And when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever, and the rest. In Peter’s wife’s mother is reckoned the corrupt disposition of unbelief, to which belongs the freedom of the will, which joins us to itself by a kind of fellowship of marriage. So, by the Lord’s entrance into Peter’s house, that is, into the body, unbelief is healed, burning with the heat of sins and sick under the dominion of vices. Then, presently healed, she ministers in the service of her office. For Peter believed first, and is the chief of the apostolate: and what before was sick in him, growing strong by the word of God, has worked as in the service of the common salvation. That this likeness of Peter’s wife’s mother is rightly applied to the disposition of unbelief, we shall treat in the place which follows concerning the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law. For now Peter’s wife’s mother will be called unbelief for this reason, that until he believed he was held in bondage to his own will.
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When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits, and so on. In the healing given to all without distinction in the evening hours we recognise the gathering of those whom He taught after the Passion: forgiving the sins of all, taking away the infirmities of all, and driving out the incitements of the evil pleasures that lie in wait; by the Passion of His body, according to the sayings of the prophets, swallowing up the infirmities of human weakness.
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Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest, and the rest. Many things meet us here which may disturb the common understanding. And yet it is not we who invent a meaning; the events themselves impart the meaning to us. For it is not the thing that follows the meaning, but the meaning that follows the thing. The multitudes are great, and the Lord bids His disciples go across the sea. I do not think it in keeping with the Saviour’s goodness that He should have wished to leave those who thronged about Him, and to choose some hidden place for imparting salvation. Then the scribe comes after Him, saying that he will follow the Master wherever He goes; but nothing is read as said or done by the scribe that could give offence. The Lord answered that the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests to rest in, but the Son of man has no place where to lay His head. And that the disciple asked to be given time to bury his father; that this was refused, and the observance of a pious and human duty forbidden. We must therefore bring out the reason of so many and such different things: and in such a way that the understanding of their inner meaning may be unfolded according to the connected order of the events and the weightiest causes of the truth itself.
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The name of disciples must not be thought to be confined to the twelve apostles only. For we read that there were many disciples besides the apostles. Out of the whole multitude, then, a certain choice is commanded to be made: of those, that is, who would follow the Lord through the many perils and tossings of this world. For the Church is like a ship, and is called so in many places: which, having taken on board passengers of the most various kinds and nations, is exposed to all the blasts of the winds and all the motions of the sea. And so it is harassed by the assaults both of the world and of the unclean spirits. For with the movements of every peril set before us, we enter into Christ’s ship, that is, the Church, knowing that we shall be tossed by sea and wind. So, that the order of the figurative meaning might hang together, and that the portion of the faithful who go up into the ship might be understood, and the crowd of unbelievers who stay behind, the person of the scribe and of the disciple is added.
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And the scribe, who is one of the teachers of the Law, asks whether he is to follow. As if it were not contained in the Law that this is the Christ whom it would profit to follow! So he expressed the disposition of unbelief under the distrust of a question: because the taking up of faith is not a matter for questioning, but for following. And that this same question might be punished by the judgment due to unbelief, the Lord answered that foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests in which to rest, but the Son of man has not where to lay His head. The fox is a crafty animal, hiding itself in holes about houses, and lying in wait for the birds of the farmyard: and we read in several places that false prophets are called by this name. And we have learned that the unclean spirits are very often named birds of the air. So the Son of God, seeing how few were following, and the teacher of the Law in doubt whether to follow Him, reproaches them that the false prophets have holes, and the unclean spirits nests to rest in: because those left outside the ship, that is, set outside the Church, have become the sojourning-place of the false prophets and the dwelling of devils; but that the Son of man, that is, He whose head is God, does not find any in whom He may rest, the knowledge of God being placed in them: all being invited, as into the ship, so into the Church, but few to follow for fear of the sea, that is, of the world.
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After this comes the disciple, not asking whether he should follow — for he already believed that he must follow — but praying to be allowed to bury his father. We have received at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer that we must first pray thus: Our Father which art in heaven. So, because the person of the believing people is in the disciple, he is warned to remember that his living Father is in heaven. And he is bidden to follow the Lord, since he wished to, so that the dead may bury their dead. But I think no service can be looked for from the dead. How then shall the dead bury the dead? First, then, He shows that perfect faith in Him is not to be bound by any worldly scruple of duty towards another; next, that between a faithful son and an unbelieving father the right of the name of father does not remain. He did not, then, refuse the service of burying a father; but by adding, Let the dead bury their dead, He warned that dead unbelievers are not to be mingled with the memorials of the saints, and that those too are dead who live apart from God. And therefore the mutual services of the dead are to be left to them, so that the dead are buried by the dead: because through faith in God the living must cleave to the Living.