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8. The Parable
Interpreted is the Light of These Views.
Now, having collected these things out of dissertations
about stones, I say that the Saviour with a knowledge of the difference
of pearls, of which some are in kind goodly and others worthless, said,
“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant
seeking goodly pearls;”5190 for, if some of the
pearls had not been worthless, it would not have been said, “to a
man seeking goodly pearls.” Now among the words of all
kinds which profess to announce truth, and among those who report them,
he seeks pearls. And let the prophets be, so to speak, the
mussels which conceive the dew of heaven, and become pregnant with the
word of truth from heaven, the goodly pearls which, according to the phrase
here set forth, the merchantman seeks. And the leader of the
pearls, on the finding of which the rest are found with it, is the very
costly pearl, the Christ of God, the Word which is superior to the
precious letters and thoughts in the law and the prophets, on the
finding of which also all the rest are easily taken. And the
Saviour holds converse with all the disciples, as merchant-men who are
not only seeking the goodly pearls but who have found them and possess
them, when He says, “Cast not your pearls before
swine.”5191 Now it is
manifest that these things were said to the disciples from that which
is prefixed to His words, “And seeing the multitudes He went up
into the mountain, and when He had sat down His disciples came unto
Him;”5192 for, in the course
of those words, He said, “Give not that which is holy unto the
dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine.”5193 Perhaps, then, he is not a disciple of
Christ, who does not possess pearls or the very costly pearl, the
pearls, I mean, which are goodly; not the cloudy, nor the darkened,
such as the words of the heterodox, which are brought forth not at the
sunrise, but at the sunset or in the north, if it is necessary to take
also into the comparison those things on account of which we found a
difference in the pearls which are produced in different places.
And perhaps the muddy words and the heresies which are bound up with
works of the flesh, are the darkened pearls, and those which are
produced in the marshes, not goodly pearls.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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