carefully attend to what He has added here: “for this is the law and the prophets.” Now, in
the case of these two precepts, He not merely says, The law and the prophets hang; but He
has also added, “all the law and the prophets,”455 which is the same as the whole of prophecy:
and in not making the same addition here, He has kept a place for the other precept, which
refers to the love of God. Here, then, inasmuch as He is following out the precepts with re-
spect to a single heart, and it is to be dreaded lest any one should have a double heart toward
those from whom the heart can be hid, i.e. toward men, a precept with respect to that very
thing was to be given. For there is almost nobody that would wish that any one of double
heart should have dealings with himself. But no one can bestow anything upon a fellowman
with a single heart, unless he so bestow it that he expects no temporal advantage from him,
and does it with the intention which we have sufficiently discussed above, when we were
speaking of the single eye.
76. The eye, therefore, being cleansed and rendered single, will be adapted and suited
to behold and contemplate its own inner light. For the eye in question is the eye of the heart.
Now, such an eye is possessed by him who, in order that his works may be truly good, does
not make it the aim of his good works that he should please men; but even if it should turn
out that he pleases them, he makes this tend rather to their salvation and to the glory of
God, not to his own empty boasting; nor does he do anything that is good tending to his
neighbour’s salvation for the purpose of gaining by it those things that are necessary for
getting through this present life; nor does he rashly condemn a man’s intention and wish
in that action in which it is not apparent with what intention and wish it has been done;
and whatever kindnesses he shows to a man, he shows them with the same intention with
which he wishes them shown to himself, viz. as not expecting any temporal advantage from
him: thus will the heart be single and pure in which God is sought. “Blessed,” therefore, “are
the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”456
also have a similar negative precept. It is strange that the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (i. 2) gives the negative
form, and not the positive precept. Augustin says we ought to be glad when writers before Christ spoke things
in the Gospel (En. in Ps. cxl. 6).
455 Matt. xxii. 37–40.
456 Matt. v. 8.
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Chapter XXII