CHAPTER I.] COMMENTARY ON GALATIANS. The calling is from the Father, but the cause of it is the Son. He it is who hath brought about reconciliation and bestowed it as a gift, for we were not saved by works in righteousness : or I should rather say that these blessings pro ceed from Both ; as He says, " Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine." (John xvii: 10.) He says not " ye are removing from the Gospel" but "from God who called you, "a more frightful expression, and more likely to affect them. Their seducers did not act abruptly but.gradu- ally, and while they removed them from the faith in fact, left names unchanged. It is the policy of Satan not toset his snares in open view ; had they urged them to fall away from Christ, they would have been shunned as deceivers and corrupters, but suffering them so far to continue in the faith, and putting upon their error the name of the Gospel, without fear they under mined the building employing the terms which they used as a sort of curtain to conceal the destroyers themselves. As therefore they gave the name of Gospel to this their imposture, he contends against the very name, and boldly says, " unto a different Gospel, "- Ver. 7. " Which is not another Gospel." And justly, for there is not another. 1 Never theless the Marcionites2 are misled by this phrase, as diseased persons are injured even by healthy food, for they have seized upon it, and exclaim, "So Paul himself has declared there is no other Gospel." For they do not allow all the Evangelists, but one only, and him mutilated and confused according to their pleasure. Their explanation of the words, according to my Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ," (Rom. xvi : 25.) is sufficiently ridiculous ; nevertheless, for the sake of those who are easily seduced, it is necessary to refute it. We assert, therefore, that, although a thousand Gospels were written, if the contents of all were the same, they would still be one, and their unity no wise infringed by the number of writers. So, on the other hand, if there were one writer only, but he were to contradict himself, the unity of the things written would be destroyed. For the oneness of a work depends not on the number of its authors, but on the agreement or contra- dictoriness of its contents. Whence it is clear that the four Gospels are one Gospel ; for, as the four say the same thing, its oneness is preserved [The Revised version brings out the difference of the words for "another." The first is erepov, "a different kind of" gospel, the sec ond is dAAo, "another," simply. " To a different sort of gospel, nay, it is not another gospel. There cannot be two gospels. Only cer tain men are troubling you and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But a perverted gospel is no gospel at all." G. A.) 3 Marcion flourished about A. D. 120130. His doctrine was a compound of various preceding theologies, chiefly the Gnostic. He received only a part of St. Luke s Gospel. Tertull. in Marc. iv. 2 4. He it was who on asking Polycarp to "acknowledge" him, received for answer, " 1 acknowledge thee as the first-born of Satan." by the harmony of the contents, and not impaired by the difference of persons. And Paul is not now speaking of the number but of the discrepancy of ,the things spoken. With justice might they lay hold of this expression, if the Gospels of Matthew and Luke differed in the signification of their contents, and in their doctrinal accuracy ; but as they are one and the same, let them cease being senseless and pre tending to be ignorant of these things which are plain to the very children. Ver. 7. "Only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ." That is to say, ye will not recognize another Gospel, so long as your mind is sane, so long as your vision remains healthy, and free from dis torted and imaginary phantoms. For as the disordered eye mistakes the object presented to it, so does the mind when made turbid by the confusion of evil thoughts. Thus the madman confounds objects ; but this insanity is more dangerous than a physical malady, for it works injury not in the regions of sense, but of the mind ; it creates confusion not in the organ of bodily vision, but in the eye of the understand ing. " And would3 pervert the Gospel of Christ." They had, in fact, only introduced one or two commandments, circumcision and the observance of days, but he says that the Gospel was subverted, in order to show that a slight adulteration vitiates the whole. For as he who but partially pares away the image on a royal coin renders the whole spurious, so he who swerves ever so little from the pure faith, soon proceeds from this to graver errors, and becomes entirely corrupted. Where then are those who charge us with being contentious in separating from heretics, and say that there is no real difference between us except what arises from our ambition? Let them hear Paul s assertion, that those who had but slightly innovated, subverted the Gospel. Not to say that the Son of God is a created Being, is a small matter. Know you not that even under the elder covenant, a man who gathered sticks on the sabbath, and transgressed a single com mandment, and that not a great one, was pun ished with death? (Num. xv: 32, 36.) and that Uzzah, who supported the Ark when on the point of being overturned, was struck suddenly dead, because he had intruded upon an office which did not pertain to him ? (2 Sam. vi : 6, 7.) Wherefore if to transgress the sabbath, and to touch the falling Ark, drew down the wrath of God so signally as to deprive the offender of even a momentary respite, shall he who corrupts unutterably awful doctrines find excuse and par- 3 [0Aoi T<9 : On this word Jerome aplly says, Volunt serf nan valent. The troubling of the Galatians, however, did actually take place. G. A.J