1. The Lord had said above to His disciples, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent me.” And if we inquire of whom He so spake, we find that He was led on to these words from what He had said before, “If the world hate you, know ye that it hated me before [it hated] you;” and now in adding, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin,” He more expressly pointed to the Jews. Of them, therefore, He also uttered the words that precede, for so does the context itself imply. For it is of the same parties that He said, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin;” of whom He also said, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also; but all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent me;” for it is to these words that He also subjoins the following: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.” The Jews, therefore, persecuted Christ, as the Gospel very clearly indicates, and Christ spake to the Jews, not to other nations; and it is they, therefore, that He meant to be understood by the world, that hateth Christ and His disciples; and, indeed, not those alone, but even these latter were shown by Him to belong to the same world. What, then, does He mean by the words, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin”? Was it that the Jews were without sin before Christ came to them in the flesh? Who, though he were the greatest fool, would say so? But it is