There is one of St. Hilary’s writings, evidently the earliest of those extant and probably the earliest of all, which may be noticed here, as it gives no sign of being written by a Bishop. It is the Commentary on St. Matthew. It is, in the strictest sense, a commentary, and not, like the work upon the Psalms, a series of exegetical discourses. It deals with the text of the Gospel, as it stood in Hilary’s Latin version, without comment or criticism upon its peculiarities, and draws out the meaning, chiefly allegorical, not of the whole Gospel, but apparently of lections that were read in public worship. A few pages at the beginning and end are unfortunately lost, but they cannot have contained anything of such importance as to alter the impression which we form of the book. In diction and grammar it is exactly similar to Hilary’s later writings; the fact that it is, perhaps, somewhat more stiff in style may be due to self-consciousness of a writer venturing for the first time upon so important a subject. The exegesis is often the same as that of Origen, but a comparison of the several passages in which Jerome mentions this commentary makes it certain that it is not dependent upon him in the same way as are the Homilies on the Psalms and Hilary’s lost work upon Job. Yet if he is not in this work the translator, or editor, of Origen, he is manifestly his disciple. We cannot account for the resemblance otherwise. Hilary is independently working out Origen’s thoughts on Origen’s lines. Origen is not named, nor any other author, except that he excuses himself from expounding the Lord’s Prayer on the ground that Tertullian and Cyprian had written excellent treatises upon it Comm. in Matt. v. 1. It may be mentioned that the chapters of the Commentary do not coincide with those of the Gospel.. This is a rare exception to his habit of not naming other writers. But, whoever the writers were from whom Hilary drew his exegesis, his theology is his own. There is no immaturity in the thought; every one of his characteristic ideas, as will be seen in the next chapter, is already to be found here. But there is one interesting landmark in the growth of the Latin theological vocabulary, very archaic in itself and an evidence that Hilary had not yet decided upon the terms that he would use. He twice Comm. in Matt. xvi. 4, theotetam quam deitatem Latini nuncupant, xxvi. 5, theotetam quam deitatem nuncupamus. The strange accusative theotetam makes it the more probable that we have here a specimen of the primitive Greek vocabulary of Latin Christendom of which so few examples, e.g. Baptism and Eucharist, have survived. Cyprian had probably the chief share in destroying it; but the subject has never been examined as it deserves. speaks of Christ’s Divinity as ‘the theotes which we call deitas.’ In his later writings he consistently uses divinitas, except in the few instances where he is almost forced, to avoid intolerable monotony, to vary it with deitas; and in his commentary he would not have used either of these words, still less would he have used both, unless he were feeling his way to a fixed technical term. Another witness to the early date of the work is the absence of any clear sign that Hilary knew of the existence of Arianism. He knows, indeed, that there are heresies which impugn the Godhead of Christ So especially xii. 18. There is similarly a possible allusion to Marcellus’ teaching in xi. 9, which, however, may equally well be a reminiscence of some cognate earlier heresy., and in consequence states that doctrine with great precision, and frequently as well as forcibly. But it has been pointed out Maffei’s Introduction, §15. that he discusses many texts which served, in the Arian strife, for attack or defence, without alluding to that burning question: and this would have been impossible and, indeed, a dereliction of duty, in Hilary’s later life. And there is one passage xxxi. 3, penes quem erat antequam nasceretur in which he speaks of God the Father as ‘He with (or ‘in’) Whom the Word was before He was born.’ The Incarnation is spoken of in words which would usually denote the eternal Generation: and if a candid reader could not be misled, yet an opportunity is given to the malevolent which Hilary or, indeed, any careful writer engaged in the Arian controversy would have avoided. The Commentary, then, is an early work, yet in no respect unworthy of its author. But though he had developed his characteristic thoughts before he began to write it, they are certainly less prominent here than in the treatises which followed. It is chiefly remarkable for its display of allegorical ingenuity. Its pages are full of fantastic interpretations of the kind which he had so great a share in introducing into Western Europe See Ebert, Litteratur des Mittelalters, i. 139.. He started by it a movement which he would have been powerless to stop; that he was not altogether satisfied with the principle of allegory is shewn by the more modest use that he made of it when he composed, with fuller experience, the Homilies on the Psalms. It is, perhaps, only natural that there is little allegorism in the De Trinitate. Such a hot-house growth could not thrive in the keen air of controversy. As for the Commentary on St. Matthew, its chief influence has been indirect, in that St. Ambrose made large use of it in his own work upon the same Gospel. The consideration of Hilary’s use of Scripture and of the place which it held in his system of theology is reserved for the next chapter, where illustrations from this Commentary are given.