Let him that likes quit me at once; let him that likes accuse me, I will not suffer it in any one. When I am about to be judged at the Tribunal of Christ, ye stand afar off, and your favor, while I am giving in my account. "Those words have ruined all! he says, [828] let him not [829] go and transfer himself to another sect!' Nay! he is weak! condescend to him!" To what point? Till when? Once, and twice, and thrice, but not perpetually.
Lo! I charge you again, and protest after the pattern of the blessed Paul, "that if I come again I will not spare." (2 Cor. xiii. 2.) But when ye have done as ye ought, then ye will know how great the gain is, how great the advantage. Yes! I entreat and beseech you, and would not refuse to clasp your knees and supplicate you [830] in this behalf. What softness is it! What luxury, what wantonness! This is not luxury, but wantonness. What senselessness is it! What madness! So many poor stand around the Church; and though the Church has so many children, and so wealthy, she is unable to give relief to even one poor person; "but one is hungry, and another is drunken" (1 Cor. xi. 21.); one voideth his excrement even into silver, another has not so much as bread! What madness! what brutishness so great as this? May we never come to the proof, whether we will prosecute the disobedient, nor to the indignation which allowing [831] these practices would cause us; but that willingly and with patience we may avoid all this, that we may live to God's glory, and be delivered from the punishment in the other world, and may obtain the good things promised to those who love Him, through the grace and love toward man, &c.
[811] [The word here rendered "respect" means primarily "part." But it is exegetically wrong to insist on this sense as Chrys. does, for the phrase designates the category or class of things. See Meyer or Lightfoot.--J.A.B.]
[812] E.V. marg.
[813] ["Not" is wanting in the best documents for N.T. text, and so is rightly omitted in Rev. Ver. The participle must then take a different sense, such as dwelling in the things which he hath seen, poring over and confining himself to these. The expression is obscure, and was simplified by inserting "not." Comp. Meyer.--J.A.B.]
[814] ex, which makes Him a source of action in Himself.
[815] kairon, i.e. the time of Christ's Advent, or "after its time."
[816] See his Comment on 1 Cor. xi. 17-21. Hom. xxvii. on 1 Cor., where he says that the supper referred to was "when the solemn service was completed, after the Communion of the Mysteries."
[817] Montfaucon thinks this refers to Eutropius, whose disgrace occasioned two Homilies of St. Chrys. Ben. t. iii. This is questioned in the recent Paris Edition.
[818] i.e. his native Antioch.
[819] to kratounti, the Emperor Theodosius. This was preached under his successor Arcadius. For an account of the events referred to, see Pref. to Homilies on the statues. The "neighboring city," however, is not named there, though the sympathy of neighboring cities is mentioned in Hom. ii. It is supposed to be Seleucia. ["Our city" might be naturally used to denote what was, at the time of which he is speaking, the city of himself and his fellow-citizens. See above, Hom. iii., near the end, the clear proof that these homilies on Colossians were delivered in Constantinople.--J.A.B.]
[820] Ed. Par. refers to Herod. vii. 27, where such a tree is mentioned as given to Darius; also to Diod. Sic. xix. 49, and Brisson de Regn. Pers. l. i. c. 77.
[821] Sav. eneballe. He must mean the brazen bull of Phalaris.
[822] teos de ton proteron. And besides among them of earlier times, wealth made that king, the warrior, from a man, a woman; from a woman, what shall I say? Savile ton, which is better, and neglected by Ed. Par. The sequel shows that the same king is meant.
[823] [The syntax is obscure, and the passage probably corrupt; but the general meaning is plain.--J.A.B.]
[824] Alluding to Xerxes, see Herod. vii. 35.
[825] amidas. St. Clem Al. mentions the like absurdity, Pædag. ii. 3.
[826] [The "not," though found in all documents, seems (Field) quite out of place. Without it, the meaning is, "Now confess that you were somewhat attracted towards the idea expressed, and started up, and fell a longing," &c. Copyists probably understood "the thing said" to be the rebuke just given, and hence felt the "not" to be necessary.--J.A.B.]
[827] [Here again the "not" seems unsuitable, if not destructive of the sense, and is omitted by Field.--J.A.B.]
[828] i.e. the Preacher says.
[829] [Field inserts "not" upon the authority of one ms. The sentence is intelligible without it.--J.A.B.]
[830] hiketerian theinai. He alludes to the ancient custom of formally supplicating for defense or relief, as by sitting on the hearth. Sophocl. OEd. Tyr. 1, &c.
[831] epitrepsai. Perhaps epitripsai, "aggravating," as Ben. t. i. p. 24. B, and p. 225. A.