{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-520","native_reference":{"book_number":690,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":20,"verse_to":20},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: Look within, for man cannot judge whom he cannot see. If \"we assure our heart,\" let it be \"before Him.\" Because \"if our heart think ill of us,\" i.e. accuse us within, that we do not the thing with that mind it ought to be done withal, \"greater is God than our heart, and knoweth all things.\" Thou hidest thine heart from man: hide it from God if thou canst! How shalt thou hide it from Him, to whom it is said by a sinner, fearing and confessing, \"Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? and from Thy face whither shall I flee?\" He sought a way to flee, to escape the judgment of God, and found none. For where is God not? \"If I shall ascend,\" saith he, \"into heaven, Thou art there: if I shall descend into hell, Thou art there.\" Whither wilt thou go? whither wilt thou flee? Wilt thou hear counsel? If thou wouldest flee from Him, flee to Him. Flee to Him by confessing, not from Him by hiding: hide thou canst not, but confess thou canst. Say unto Him, \"Thou art my place to flee unto,\" and let love be nourished in thee, which alone leadeth unto life. Let thy conscience bear thee witness that thy love is of God. If it be of God, do not wish to display it before men; because neither men's praises lift thee unto heaven, nor their censures put thee down from thence. Let Him see, who crowneth thee: be He thy witness, by whom as judge thou art crowned. \"Greater is God than our heart, and knoweth all things.\"<br/><i>— Ten Homilies on 1 John 6</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: For if our heart reproves us, etc. If our conscience itself accuses us within, because we are not doing our good works with the right intention, how can we hide our knowledge from Him to whom it is sung: Behold, Lord, you have known all things, and, Because the darkness will not be darkened from you, and the night will be illuminated like the day (Psalms 138)?<br/><i>— Commentary on the Catholic Epistles</i></p><p><b>Clement of Alexandria ((as quoted by Cassiodorus))</b>: He says, \"For God is greater than our heart;\" that is, the virtue of God [is greater] than conscience, which will follow the soul. Wherefore he continues, and says, \"and knoweth all things.\"<br/><i>— From the Latin Translation of Cassiodorus</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: For, when one reads of God as being \"the searcher and witness of the heart; \" when His prophet is reproved by His discovering to him the secrets of the heart; when God Himself anticipates in His people the thoughts of their heart, \"Why think ye evil in your hearts? \" when David prays \"Create in me a clean heart, O God,\" and Paul declares, \"With the heart man believeth unto righteousness,\" and John says, \"By his own heart is each man condemned; \" when, lastly, \"he who looketh on a woman so as to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart,\" -then both points are cleared fully up, that there is a directing faculty of the soul, with which the purpose of God may agree; in other words, a supreme principle of intelligence and vitality (for where there is intelligence, there must be vitality), and that it resides in that most precious part of our body to which God especially looks: so that you must not suppose, with Heraclitus, that this sovereign faculty of which we are treating is moved by some external force; nor with Moschion, that it floats about through the whole body; nor with Plato, that it is enclosed in the head; nor with Zenophanes, that it culminates in the crown of the head; nor that it reposes in the brain, according to the opinion of Hippocrates; nor around the basis of the brain, as Herophilus thought; nor in the membranes thereof, as Strato and Erasistratus said; nor in the space between the eyebrows, as Strato the physician held; nor within the enclosure of the breast, according to Epicurus: but rather, as the Egyptians have always taught, especially such of them as were accounted the expounders of sacred truths; in accordance, too, with that verse of Orpheus or Empedocles:<br/><i>— A Treatise on the Soul</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"c6a7352eb4dcd61a656ace67999f36ed025bf144cae6eff01ea8e36cffc3d267","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":520,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"5ca7b2488c440c06b907ea5270be02f5639e2ddc9515b50dd74dddade4c0749b","translator":null,"work":null}