Glossa Ordinaria

“Not I. About to write against the heretics who have fallen away from the truth, he says that of all who have known the truth there is one love toward the saints, so that by the likeness of catholics he may deter them from the fellowship of heretics. For all the faithful agree in one truth; the heretics attack one another in their errors.”

“I rejoiced greatly. As if he were to say: What you hold, hold fast. Receive nothing else from the heretics, for I rejoice in the things you have; I desire nothing else to be added to you for salvation. Since therefore I rejoice at your good beginning, do not make me grieve at your falling away, for as a watchful guardian I know all that is done concerning you. Walking in the truth. Adam was placed in paradise, that he might work it and keep it. The working designates advancement in effect; the keeping designates the state and constancy of perfection itself.”

“Look to yourselves, etc. Do not consent to such men as these, but rather consider how you have been perfectly instructed unto faith and constancy. But that you may receive a full reward — that is, that you may lay hold of the true God with full gladness — by persevering in the doctrine handed down to you, and by not consenting to their error.”

“And abideth not. If anyone separates himself from the divine teaching, so as to be outside the right faith and the keeping of God's commandments, he separates himself from God, that he may not have God. Through the active and the contemplative life, he who is the Creator of all becomes the God of a man by manifesting himself to him. He that abideth. He abides in the gospel teaching who thinks and acts according to it; he separates himself from it who thinks and acts otherwise.”

“Nor say to him, Hail. Because it seems a sign of consent to his error; for we say this to friends whose works please us. And even if you yourselves were perhaps not deceived, others might still be deceived through such familiarity on your part, who would believe that those men were pleasing to you, and so would believe them.”

“Greater than these. I rejoiced for this reason, that of these brethren who come I have no greater favour — that is: when the brethren come to me, in no deed or word of theirs do I rejoice more than when they announce that my sons, whom I have begotten by preaching or by baptizing, keep the truth of right faith and of right action.”

“I would perhaps have written, etc. You ought to persevere in almsgiving, for I understand so great a usefulness in it that I would have written of the commendation of almsgiving not only to you but even to the whole Church; but I let this go of necessity, because Diotrephes does not regard our authority. Diotrephes, a heresiarch of that time, was usurping headship for himself by teaching novelties. Diotrephes is interpreted speciously foolish, or beauty running mad, so that he might mark the treachery of his heart even by his name. To the Church. I would have written to that Church which is perhaps — that is, doubtfully — a Church, and that through the practice of almsgiving it might deserve to become a perfect Church.”

“I will admonish. That is, I will bring them into the knowledge of all by reproving them more openly; of which things he has no precedent anywhere, but he does them and devises new ones, prating, using false arguments to refute us and so to draw you back from the faith. Just as we ought not by our own fault to stir up the tongues of detractors, lest they themselves perish, so those stirred up by their own malice we ought to bear with an even mind, that our merit may increase — and sometimes to restrain them, lest while they spread reports about us they corrupt the hearts of those who might have heard good things.”

“Transferring grace. The hardness and strictness of the law, which says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the grace of the Gospel tempers, in which the crimes committed are purged through penance and the fruits of almsgiving. But the impious transfer this grace into wantonness, who now sin the more freely, the less they see themselves examined for their crimes by the harshness of the law.”

“All things. The secrets of the faith; and you have no need to hear recent things, as though holier, from new teachers; that is: You know perfectly all that must be known concerning the faith, and therefore there is no need that you should hear them. Because Jesus. The heretics having been refuted, then, as he calls back those who had given credence to the malicious and the impious, he shows how great is the greatness of the Lord whom they deny, showing that he himself is the one who led the people of Israel out of Egypt.”

“But the angels. And truly those are not to be imitated who falsely say that Jesus is not true God, but a man begotten of both sexes. For if he did not spare the angels who sinned, neither will he spare men who grow proud. They did not keep their own principality. So too men, who do not keep the principality by which through the grace of adoption they were made sons of God. But they abandon their dwelling, that is, the unity of the Church in which they were reborn, or the seats of the heavenly kingdom which they were to receive if they kept the faith; and he will condemn them gravely before the judgment, and more gravely in the universal judgment. With eternal chains. That is, with pride and an impenitent heart. Or the divine sentence which will confine them forever Or the chain is the desire of the lowest things, bound by which they cannot return to higher things.”