in their doctrinal accuracy; but as they are one and the same, let them cease being senseless
and pretending 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 distorted 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 un-
derstanding.
“And would21 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 be-
comes 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 commandment, and that not a great one, was punished
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
8
and pardon? Assuredly not. A want of zeal in small matters is the cause of all our calamities;
and because slight errors escape fitting correction, greater ones creep in. As in the body, a
neglect of wounds generates fever, mortification, and death; so in the soul, slight evils
overlooked open the door to graver ones. It is accounted a trivial fault that one man should
neglect fasting; that another, who is established in the pure faith, dissembling on account
of circumstances, should surrender his bold profession of it, neither is this anything great
or dreadful; that a third should be irritated, and threaten to depart from the true faith, is
excused on the plea of passion and resentment. Thus a thousand similar errors are daily
introduced into the Church, and we are become a laughing-stock to Jews and Greeks, seeing
21 [θέλοντες: On this word Jerome aptly says, Volunt sed non valent. The troubling of the Galatians, however,
did actually take place.—G.A.]
19
Galatians 1:1--3