can come unto Me," and " His brethren could not speak peacea- bly unto him." (John vi. 44; Gen. xxxvii. 4.) It means, "Ye have no will to hear with your hearts."
Chrysostom remarks : " Not to be able here means not to be willing."
44. — [Ye are of your father the devil, etc."] This verse deserves special attention, both for the sternness of the rebuke it con- taius, and the deep subject which it handles. The general sense is as follows: "Ye are so far from being spiritual chil- dren of Abraham, or true children of God, that, on the contrary, ye may be rightly called the children of the devil; and ye show it, by having a will set on doing the evil things which your father suggests to you. He, from the beginning of creation, was a being set on the destruction of man, and abode not in the original truth and righteousness in which he was created ; for now truth is not in his nature. When he now speaks and sug- gests a lie, he speaks out of his own peculiar inward nature, for he is emiently a liar, and the father of a lie."
When our Lord says to the wicked Jews, " Ye are of your father the devil," He does not mean that the wicked are made wicked by the devil in the same sense that the godly are made godly by God, created anew and begotten of God ; but He uses a common Hebraism, by which persons who are closely con- nected with, or entirely under the influence of, another, are called "his children." It is in this sense that the wicked and unbelieving are truly the children of the devil. This must be carefully remembered. The devil has no power to " create" the wicked. He only finds them born in sin, and, working upon their sinful nature, obtains such an influence, that he becomes practically the " father of the wicked." (See Matt. xiii. 38 and 1 John iii. 8; Matt. xiii. 19 ; Luke xvi. 8; xx. 34; Isai. lvii. 4; Numb. xvii. 10.)
Augustine says : " Whence are those Jews sons of the dev- il?— By imitation, not by birth." He also refers to Ezek. xvi. 3, as a parallel case.
When our Lord says, " Ye will do the lusts of your father," we must remember that "ye will " is emphatic in the Greek. " Ye have a will, and mind, and purpose, and disposition." — By " doing the lusts," lie means "ye follow those evil inclinations and desires " which are peculiarly characteristic of the devil, and according to his mind, — such as to commit murder, and to love and tell a lie. The desire of the devil can only be for that which is evil.
When our Lord says the devil was a "murderer from the beginning," I do not think He refers exclusively to Cain's mur- der of Abel, -though I think it was in His mind. (See 1 John iii. 12.) I rather think He means that the devil, from the beginning of creation, was set on bringing death into the world, and mur- dering man both body and soul.