Cornelius a Lapide

For all the law is fulfilled in one word. That is, the whole law so far as it concerns our neighbour, or according to what was said in the preceding verse, as we serve one another. Cf. Rom. xiii. 8. S. Augustine (de Trin . lib. viii.), S. Thomas, Anselm, however, say that the who’e law rests on the love of God or of our neighbour, but that the latter presupposes the former, inasmuch as our neighbour is to be loved for the sake of God. Therefore he who loves his neighbour both fulfils the law, which says, Thou shall love thy neighbour , and also loves God and fulfils the law, which says, Thou shall love the Lord thy God. Ver. 1 5. — But if ye bite and devour one another. Beware, if you attack one another with calumnies, lest you be mutually consumed. Two men calumniating and enviously pursuing each other are like two dogs fighting, and biting each other. They consume each other, nay, they devour themselves. Well said the poet : “ Than envy nothing is more just f for it forthwith bites and tortures its author .” And therefore : “ Than envy not even Sicilian tyrants have found a greater torment” See my notes on Phil. i. 18, where I enumerate the properties of envy. Wisely and piously said S. Augustine {Sent. 179) : “ To a religious man it ought to be little not to excite enmities , or to excite them only by awkivard speech ; he ought to strive to extinguish them by seasonable discourse.”