In the city of which we have just spoken, Capernaum, whilst the Lord Jesus was teaching in a certain house, surrounded by Pharisees and doctors of the law, who had come out of every town of Judaea and Jerusalem, there came some people bearing a paralytic man, and wishing to bring him into the house that he might be healed by the Lord. When, on account of the crowd, they were unable to force an entrance, they went up to the roof of the house, and let him down from thence, and placed him before Jesus. And the Lord Jesus, seeing their faith, said, “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” But the Pharisees and doctors of the law, who were maliciously watching Him, said within themselves that He blasphemed against God ; for God only can forgive sins, and this power Christ attributed to Himself, whom they believed to be mere man. The kind and lowly Lord, who searcheth the hearts and reins of men, answered, “Why think ye evil in your hearts ?” And He added, “That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgive sins /’1 etc. * There are four points here for meditation. First, the penetrating power of the mind of Christ, who saw their thoughts. Secondly, that sicknesses are often the result of sins, and that absolution from the sins sometimes brings deliverance from their effects. There is another instance of this, in the sick man healed at the pool of Bethesda, to whom our Lord said, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee .”2 Thirdly, consider how great is the worth of faith. Even though it be the faith not of oneself but of another it is of avail, as we have just seen in the case of the centurion’s servant, and, as we shall presently see, in that of the woman of Canaan, through whose faith her daughter was healed. This takes place daily in the baptism of infants, who, if they die before they reach years of discretion, receive, through the faith of their sponsors, an earnest whereby they are saved through Christ’s merits — a doctrine opposed by the accursed teaching of some heretics. Fourthly, we ought to meditate upon our Lord sitting in the midst of them, and gently answering His malicious opponents, and working the miracle; in doing this, recur to the general rules which I have already laid down.
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