{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-3146","native_reference":{"book_number":510,"chapter_from":5,"chapter_to":5,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":3,"verse_to":3},"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>Bede</b>: Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart? In another translation, according to the Greek text, it reads: Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart? It should be noted here that no creature can fill the soul and mind of a man according to essence, but only the Creator Trinity. For it is only according to operation and the instinct of the will that the mind is filled with things that are created. Satan indeed fills the mind of someone and the chief part of the heart, not by entering into him and into his senses, and entering the access of the heart (so to speak), since this power is peculiar to divinity alone, but as a cunning, wicked, deceitful, and fraudulent deceiver, dragging the human soul into evil affections through thoughts and the incitements of vices, with which he himself is full. Satan thus filled Ananias's heart, not by entering himself, but by inserting his venom of malice.<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p><p><b>Cyprian</b>: That what any one has vowed to God, he must quickly repay. In Solomon: \"According as thou hast vowed a vow to God, delay not to pay it.\" Concerning this same thing in Deuteronomy: \"But if thou hast vowed a vow to the Lord thy God, I thou shalt not delay to pay it: because the Lord thy God inquiring shall seek it of thee; and it shall be for a sin. Thou shalt observe those things that shall go forth out of thy lips, and shalt perform the gift which thou hast spoken with thy mouth.\" Of this same matter in the forty-ninth Psalm: \"Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows to the Most High. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.\" Of this same thing in the Acts of the Apostles: \"Why hath Satan filled thine heart, that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost, when thy estate was in thine own power? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.\" Also in Jeremiah: \"Cursed is he who doeth the work of God negligently.\"<br/><i>— Treatise XII Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews</i></p><p><b>Cyril of Jerusalem</b>: Peter was not with Ananias and Sapphira when they sold their possessions, but he was present by the Spirit; Why, he says, hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost? There was no accuser; there was no witness; whence knew he what had happened? Whiles it remained was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? The unlettered Peter, through the grace of the Spirit, learnt what not even the wise men of the Greeks had known.<br/><i>— Catechetical Lecture 16:17</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: For Ananias became a thief of his own goods, secretly, as he thought, from all men, and concealing his sin: but the Holy Spirit at the same moment was in Peter, and detected his intent, dragged down as it was to avarice, and gave to Peter from Himself the power of seeing the secret, while it is clear that He could not have done this had He not been able to behold hidden things.<br/><i>— On 'Not Three Gods'</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: And of the Holy Spirit also, Peter says to Ananias, \"Why hath Satan filled thine heart, to lie to the Holy Ghost?\" showing that the Holy Spirit was a true witness, aware of what Ananias had dared to do in secret, and by Whom the manifestation of the secret was made to Peter. For Ananias became a thief of his own goods, secretly, as he thought, from all men, and concealing his sin: but the Holy Spirit at the same moment was in Peter, and detected his intent, dragged down as it was to avarice, and gave to Peter from Himself the power of seeing the secret, while it is clear that He could not have done this had He not been able to behold hidden things.<br/><i>— On 'Not Three Gods'</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: For having made a vow they offered their money to God as if it were their own and not his to whom they had vowed it; and keeping back for their own use a part of that which belonged to another, through fear of famine which true faith never fears, they drew down on themselves suddenly the avenging stroke, which was meant not in cruelty toward them but as a warning to others. In fact, the apostle Peter by no means called down death upon them, as Porphyry foolishly says. He merely announced God's judgment by the spirit of prophecy, that the doom of two persons might be a lesson to many.<br/><i>— LETTER 130.14</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: How came it into the mind of this hapless wretch to commit this crime? \"But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?\" Observe even in this, a great miracle performed, greater far than the former.</p><p>Do you see that this is the charge brought against Ananias, that having made the money sacred, he afterwards secreted it? Couldest thou not, said Peter, after selling thy land, use the proceeds as thine own? Wast thou forbidden? Wherefore after thou hadst promised it? See how at the very beginning, the devil made his attack; in the very midst of such signs and wonders, how this man was hardened! Something of the same kind had happened upon a time in the Old Testament. The son of Charmi coveted the devoted thing: for observe there also what vengeance ensues upon the sin. Sacrilege, beloved, is a most grievous crime, insulting, and full of contempt. We neither obliged thee to sell, the Apostle says, nor to give thy money when thou hadst sold; of thine own free choice thou didst it; why hast thou then stolen from the sacred treasury? \"Why,\" he says, \"hath Satan filled thine heart?\" Well, if Satan did the thing, why is the man made guilty of it? For admitting the influence of the devil, and being filled with it. You will say, they ought to have corrected him. But he would not have received correction; for he that has seen such things as he had seen, and is none the better, would certainly be none the better for anything else that could be done; the matter was not one to be simply passed over: like a gangrene, it must be cut out, that it might not infect the rest of the body. As it is, both the man himself is benefitted in regard that he is not left to advance further in wickedness, and the rest, in that they are made more earnest; otherwise the contrary would have ensued.<br/><i>— Homily on Acts 12</i></p><p><b>Oecumenius</b>: \"Ananias, why has?\" etc. For we do not, he says, drag you unwillingly; that which has been randomly taken from you as an offering to God, again they spend for their own need, an indisputable sacrilege.<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"a0fc28910830a889d8439bd6ae89497842b710752f23533eb0ff8f93ff49d5e8","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":3146,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"cbcda5165922625a0fb6ccbaaef53a1731daba3a634a7584774153596264cb34","translator":null,"work":null}