Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost The Gospel Matt. 22. v. 35. Saturday Meditation: A Plaine Path-way To Heaven Thomas Hill 1634


GOSPEL Matt. 22. v. 35.
At that time, the pharisees came to Jesus, and one of them, a doctor of the law, asked Him, tempting Him: Master, which is the great commandment of the law? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. And the Pharisees being gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying: What think you of Christ? whose son is He? They said to Him: David’s. He saith to them: How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool? If David then call Him Lord, how is He his son? And no man was able to answer Him a word; neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions.

SATURDAY MEDITATION

Chriſt being demanded, which was the firſs & greatest commandment, did not only answer that, though they demanded it out of envy & malice to entrap him, but added another, saying: And the second is like unto this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; and withalſ j propoſe a question unto them , whose Sonne they thought Chriſt, their expected Messiah; and Saviour, to be? and proved, that whereas the tooke him to be a meer man, some great king that should restore Israel to their former flourishing state in the world, he was God as well as man: & this he proved , becauſe Dawid whose sonne he was, that is to say, of whose seed he was to come called him his Lord,which parents vſe not to do unto their children, ſaying in one of his Psalmes: The Lord ſaid vnto my pſalies. 

Lord, fit at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool: Which words being understood of Christ, the Mesias they expected, as they could not deny, they were ſoconuin- ced, that, as the text sayth, they had not a word to answer. 

The first, he did to shew the Pharisees, that they did violate and break the second Commandment of loving their neighbour as themſelues, in that they came to him, and asked him which was the great Commandment, out of envy and malice to entrap him, & in violating that, did violate alſo the other of loving God, the second being like unto the first. 

The second, to wit, asking them whose sonne they thought Christ to be, he did to make them see their ignorance, in that maine point of Sf 4 the, the eºſeſias, who thought themselves to learned to learn; and to intimate vnto them, that he himself might be that Messias, doing those things amógst them, that none but God could do. 

And both these he did, because he would not only teach, and instrućt them in word, to love God and their neighbour, but alſo in deed as a good preacher or teacher should †: them good for euill, that is to say, inſtructing them notwithstanding their malice towards him in their fayth and manners, that they might come to believe in him, and be saved, leaving us an example to do the like: and he did it in mild and gentle manner, without any ard or harsh word, the rather to do them good; giuing us example likewiſe thereby, that in all differéces with our neighbour, but especially in our conferences, or disputes with them of a contrary religion,to diº alall our arguments and ſpeaches to their conuerſion, and ſpiri- tuall good, in the mildeſt and faireſt manner we can, which is always moſt apt to do them good. Sſ ;


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