Tractates (Lectures) on the Gospel of John — Tractate 92

St. Augustine of Hippo

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2

The Lord Jesus, in the discourse which He addressed to His disciples after the supper, when Himself in immediate proximity to His passion, and, as it were, on the eve of departure, and of depriving them of His bodily presence while continuing His spiritual presence to all His disciples till the very end of the world, exhorted them to endure the persecutions of the wicked, whom He distinguished by the name of the world: and from which He also told them that He had chosen the disciples themselves, that they might know it was by the grace of God they were what they were, and by their own vices they had been what they had been. And then His own persecutors and theirs He clearly signified to be the Jews, that it might be perfectly apparent that they also were included in the appellation of that damnable world that persecutes the saints. And when He had said of them that they knew not Him that sent Him, and yet hated both the Son and the Father, that is, both Him who was sent and Him who sent Him — of all which we have already treated in previous discourses — He reached the place where it is said, This comes to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. And then He added, as if by way of consequence, the words whereon we have undertaken at present to discourse: But when the Comforter has come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He shall bear witness of me: and you also shall bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. But what connection has this with what He had just said, But now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father: but that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause? Was it that the Comforter, when He came, even the Spirit of truth, convicted those, who thus saw and hated, by a still clearer testimony? Yea, verily, some even of those who saw, and still hated, He did convert, by this manifestation of Himself, to the faith that works by love. [[Galatians 5.6]] To make this view of the passage intelligible, we recall to your mind that so it actually befell. For when on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell upon an assembly of one hundred and twenty men, among whom were all the apostles; and when they, filled therewith were speaking in the language of every nation; a goodly number of those who had hated, amazed at the magnitude of the miracle (especially when they perceived in Peter's address so great and divine a testimony borne in behalf of Christ, as that He, who was slain by them and accounted among the dead, was proved to have risen again, and to be now alive), were pricked in their hearts and converted; and so became aware of the beneficent character of that precious blood which had been so impiously and cruelly shed, because themselves redeemed by the very blood which they had shed. [[Acts 2.2]] For the blood of Christ was shed so efficaciously