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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 45
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I. A critical enquiry why the blessed Baptist is called by Christ not only the lamp, but burning and shining.
Having but now with toil stayed our pen on the second book, and swum through the deep and wide sea of Divine contemplations, thinking so to reach the end, as a harbour, and all but mooring our skiff on the mainland, we see the commencement of another ocean, to wit; our course on the sequel. Which that we should accomplish with all diligence, both the nature of the thing shames us into, and that said by some one persuades us no less unto, For glorious is the fruit of good labours. Come then, let us, mounting up unto a courageous purpose of mind, commit our affairs to the guidance of the good and loving God: let us, spreading forth like a sail, the expanse of our understanding and embracing the grace of the Spirit as the sound of a fair wind from the stern, run out into deep in-search. For it is Christ Which maketh a way in the sea and a path in the water. Our second book then ended with, But I receive not testimony from man; but these things I say, that YE might be saved. Let us begin the third, joining in order what follows concerning the holy Baptist, of whom Christ says;
35 He was the lamp burning and shining; and YE were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.
He likens the holy Baptist to a lamp, in that as far as appertains to the measure of man, he shone forth before His Coming, yet not with his own light: for not its own is the light in the lamp, but from without and bestowed and added: thus will you see in the saints also the illumination that is from Christ in the Spirit. Wherefore they both thinking and acting most wisely do themselves confess out of their own mouth, Of His fulness have all WE received. For the Only-Begotten is by Nature Light, in that from Light too He beamed forth, I mean, from the Essence of the Father: but the creation partakes of it, and whatever is endowed with power of reasoning and thinking, is as a vessel most excellently fashioned by God the Most Excellent Artificer of all things, with capacity for being filled with Divine Light.
The blessed Baptist then is a lamp according to the above-given explanation. The Saviour saying this economically calls the foolish Pharisees to remembrance of the Voice of God the Father, saying of Him, I prepared a lamp for My Christ. Very profitably and of necessity does Christ now subjoin these things to those already aforesaid. For. since, cutting off all occasion of unbelief from the Jews, and from all sides compelling them to the duty of believing on Him, He thought good to agree with them in not receiving his testimony, saying, I receive not testimony from man, that they might not suppose that the Lord was really and truly so minded respecting His forerunner, as the form of the words gives,----profitably to His present purpose, does He introduce him, not as Himself saying anything of him, but as proclaimed by the Voice of the Father. For He thought that from reverence certainly to God the Father, the gainsayer must either be ashamed, or shew himself now more nakedly fighting against God, as unrestrainedly going against the very words of God the Father.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/john-commentary-2.asp?pg=45
