who had made some progress in faith, are invested in common with the authority, first of binding, and secondly of loosing, the offences of their brethren, but most especially of loosing them by prayers in the name of Christ. In John xx., after His resur rection, our Lord having breathed upon His disciples, gives them the authority, firstly of remitting, and secondly of retaining sins ; for thus are the words and their order1 changed after the opening of the gate of salvation. The greatest part of the apostolic authority regards sins (cf. Hosea xiii. 12). The remain ing particulars are contained in this discourse by synecdoche. It is not foreign to our present purpose to compare a passage of Aristophanes as to the use of the verb Xusiv — Frogs ; Act ii. scene 6, Epirrhema2 [Ed. Dindorf, 691], — alrtav ex6s/<fi, AT2AI va,'-, Kporspov a/^apTiac (yjii) — i-6. " we ought to forgive (or remit) the faults of those who explain the cause of them."
20. MTjSsv/, to no one) Jesus had not, even to His apostles, said that He was the Christ, but He left it that they might dis cover it themselves from the testimony of facts. It was not suitable, therefore, that that should be openly told by the apostles to others before His resurrection, which was to corroborate the whole testimony to the fact of His being the Christ.3 For he who injudiciously propounds a mystery to those who do not comprehend it, injures both himself and others. Had they done so, those who believed in any way that Jesus was the Christ might have sought for an earthly kingdom with seditious up roar ; whilst the rest, and by far the greater number, might have rejected such a Messiah at that time more vehemently, and have been guilty of greater sin in crucifying Him, so as to have had the door of repentance less open to them for the future. After wards,4 the apostles openly bore witness to this truth. — 6 Xpiffroc, the Christ) Soon after the disciples had acknowledged and con fessed that Jesus was the Christ, He exhibited to them His
1 The order before had been— 1. Binding (answering to retaining); 2. Loosing (answering to remitting). The order is now reversed. — ED.
2 In old comedy, a speech, usually of Trochaic tetrameters, spoken by the Coryphaeus after the Parabasis. Liddcll and Scott, q. v. — (I. B.)
3 Inasmuch as even Peter himself could hardly have reconciled the doc trine concerning the Son of GOD with that of His Passion. — Harm., p. 369.
4 And that, too, after the lapse of but a few intervening weeks, — Harm., p. 369.