St Cyril of Alexandria Commentary on John (First Part)

Translated by P. E. Pusey

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This Part: 128 Pages

Page 5

Some then of those of most research, say that after our Saviour's Cross and Ascension into Heaven, certain false shepherds and false teachers falling like wild beasts on the Saviour's flocks terrified them not a little, speaking out of their own heart, as it is written, and not out of the mouth of the Lord; yea rather, not merely out of their own heart, but out of the teachings of their own father, I mean the devil. For if no one can call Jesus Anathema, save in Beelzebub, how is not what we say of them clearly true? What things then are they which these men belched forth against their own head? They ignorantly and impiously affirmed that the Only-Begotten Word of God, the Eternal Light, in Whom we both move and are, was then first called into being, when He was born Man of the Holy Virgin, and taking this our common fashion, shewed Himself upon earth, as it is written, and conversed with men. On those then who are thus disposed, and who dare to slander the ineffable and eternal Generation of the Son, the word of the Prophet comes heavily, saying thus: But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulteress and the whore, against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth and draw out the tongue? not bringing forth good things out of a good heart, but spueing forth the venom of the blood-defiled dragon, of whom saith the Psalmist unto the one God That is over all: Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.

But since there was no slight disturbance in regard to these things amongst them that had believed, and the ill of the scandal thereof was consuming like a plague the souls of the simpler (for some drawn away from the true doctrines by their prattle imagined that the Word was then barely called to the beginning of Being, when He became Man), those of the believers who were wiser being assembled and met together, came to the Disciple of the Saviour (I mean this John) and declared the disease that was pressing upon the brethren, and unfolded to him the prattle of them that teach otherwise, and besought that he would both strenuously assist themselves with the illumination through the Spirit, and stretch forth a saving hand to those who were already within the devil's meshes.

The disciple grieving then over them that were lost and corrupted in mind, and at the same time thinking it most unnatural to take no forethought for those that should succeed and come after, betakes himself to making the book: and the more human side, the genealogy of the legal and natural Birth according to the flesh, he left to the other Evangelists to tell at fuller length; himself with extreme ardour and courage of soul springs upon the prattle of those who are introducing such things, saying, IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD.  

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