the mighty promise just made, by declaring that His sheep are not His only, but His Father's : His Father gave them to Him. " My Father, He declares, is ' almighty,' or greater than all ; the Possessor of all power. No one is able to pluck anything out of my Father's hand, so that my sheep's safety is donbly secured." Let it be noted that- the word " them," in the last clause of our English version, is not in the Greek.
It is probable that both in this verse and the preceding one, there is a latent reference to the case of the man whom the Pharisees had lately " cast out "of the Church, or excommuni- cated. Our Lord seems to say, "You may cut off and tear away from your outward church-membership whom you will: but you can never pluck away any of my people from Me."
Let it be noted here that the Father is just as much interested in the safety of believers as the Son. To leave out of sight the Father's love, in our zeal for the glory of Christ, is very poor theology.
Melancthon dwells on this promise in a passage of singular beauty. He specially dwells on it as a ground of comfort against the invasion of Europe by the Turks, the persecution of truth by so-called Christian princes, and the furious strifes and controversies of teachers of the Church. There is a Church which nothing can harm.
Calvin remarks : " Our salvation is certain, because it is in the hand of God. Our faith is weak, and we are prone to waver : but God, who hath taken us under His protection is sufficiently powerful to scatter with a breath all the power of our adversaries. It is of great importance to turn our eyes to this."
Musculus observes that it is said the Father "gave" the sheep to Me, in the past tense. Believers were given to Christ before the foundation of the world.
30. — [7 and the father are one.~\ In order to explain how it is that the Father should take as much interest in the sheep as the Son, our Lord here declares, in the plainest and most explicit terms, the deep truth of the essential unity between Himself and His Father. Literally translated, the sentence is, "I aud my Father are one thing." By this, of course, He did not mean that His Father and He were one Person. This would over- throw the doctrine of the Trinity. But He did mean, " I and my eternal Father, though two distinct Persons, and not to be confounded, are yet one in essence, nature, dignity, power, will, and operation. Hence, in the matter of securing the safety of ray sheep, what I do, my Father does likewise. I do not act independently of Him."
This is one of those deep and mysterious texts which we must be content to receive and believe, without attempting to pry too curiously into its contents. The cautious aud exact