2 The spirit of all men is earthly, etc. This passage, down to "it is not possible that the prophet of God should do this," is found in the Vat. And other mss. of the common translation, with the exception of the Lambeth, in Command Twelfth. [Consult Wake upon omissions and transpositions in this and the former Commandment. And note, especially, his valuable caution against confounding what is here said, so confusedly, of the Spirit in man, and of the Spirit of God in his essence (1 Cor. ii. 11,12).
3 Angel of the prophetic Spirit. The holy messenger (angel) of Divinity.-Vat. [1 Cor. xiv. passim.]
4 [Here is a caution against divers Phrygian prophesyings.]
5 [This proverb is found in many languages. Hermas may have been familiar with Ovid, or with the Greek of the poetaster Choerilus, from whom Ovid, with other Latin poets, condenscended to borrow it.]
6 Earth. After this the Vatican reads: Join yourself, therefore, to that which has power, and withdraw from that one which is empty. [Hermas seems to apply to the Spirit, in carrying out his figure, those words of the Psalmist, lxxii. 6.]
1 [Concupiscence is here shown to have the nature of sin.]
2 [See the Greek of Athanasius, and Grabe's transposition, in Wake's version of the Eleventh and Twelfth Commandments.]
3 For ... God. This desire, therefore, is wicked and destructive, bringing death on the servants of God. Whoever, therefore, shall abstain from evil desire, shall live to God.-Vat.
5 Go ... wishes. And you will obtain the victory, and will be crowned on account of it, and you will arrive at good desire, and you will deliver up the victory which you have obtained to God, and you will serve Him by acting even as you yourself wish to act.-Vat.
6 Chapters third, fourth, and a part of fifth, are omitted in the Palatine. [This chapter seems based on Heb. v. 14.]
8 [Here is the commission to be a prophet , and to speak prophesyings in the conregation. If the Montanists resisted these teachings, they were self-condemned. Such is the idea here conveyed 1 Cor. xiv. 32, 37.]
9 If ... kept, omitted in Vat.
10 [Boyle beautifully reconciles "those two current assertions, that (1) God made all things for His own glory, and that (2) He made all things for man." See Usefulness of Nat. Philos., part i., essay 3, or Leighton's Works, vol. iii. p. 235, London, 1870.]
11 Isa. xxix. 13; Matt. xv. 8.
12 John xii. 40; 2 Cor. iii. 14.
16 Trust God. Believe ye, then, who on account of your sins have forgotten God.-Vat.
17 Practise ... days, omitted in Vat.
19 Rule over ... commandments. But we shall conquer him completely, if we can keep these commandments.-Vat.
244 1 [We have seen in Justin and Irenaeus what seem to us an overstrained allegorizing, and more will be encountered in Origen. On this whole subject, however, as it struck the Oriental and primitive instincts, take the following very illustrative remarks, attributed to Hartley of Winwich:-
"Nature, in it's proper order, is the book of God, and exhibits spiritual things in material forms. The knowledge of correspondences being so little understood, is one main cause of the obscurity of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which were chiefly written by the rules of these science: and not Scripture alone, but man, also, as an image of the spiritual and natural worlds, contains in himself the correspondences of both: of the former, in his interior, and of the latter in his exterior or bodily, part, and so is called the microcosm, or little world."
Such texts as Heb. ix. 24, 1 Cor. ii. 13,14, go far to explain to us the childlike faith of the Fathers. See note on Leighton's St. Peter, p. 238, vol. iii. Ed. Of William West, B.A. 1870.]
2 [Heb. xiii. 14 is the text of this very beautiful chapter. But he original Greek of Phil. iii. 20 seems, also, to be in the author's mind. St. Paul addressed it to the church of a Roman "colony," whose citizenship was not Macedonian but Roman: hence its beautiful propriety.]
3 This sentence may be also rendered thus, giving e!neken the meaning of "as regards," "respecting"-a usual enough signification: "What then do you intend to do, as you have a law in your own city regarding your lands and the rest of your possessions?" The Vatican punctuates the passage so that it runs as follows: "What then will you do, who have a law in your own city? Will you, on account of your land, or any other of your preparations, be able to deny your law?" The Vatican also omits several clauses that are in the Greek, down to "for if thou shalt deny, and shalt desire to return," etc.
4 See... law, omitted in Lips. [The qrhskei/aof Jas. i. 27.]
5 The Vatican has: "Acquit widows, and do justice to orphans."
6 The Vatican renders, "Do not covet, therefore, the riches of the heathen." [Here follows, in the Lambeth ms.., an allusion to Luke xix. 15, which Wake renders: "Trade with your own riches." See, also, Luke xii. 33.]
7 The Vatican, rendering paraxara/ssete, adulterare, proceeds as if the reference were to adultery. "Neither touch another man's wife, nor lust after her, but desire your own work, and you will be saved."
1 The Vatican reads: "Unless this vine be attached to the elm, and rest upon it, it cannot bear much fruit. For, lying upon the ground, it produces bad fruit, because it is not suspended upon the elm."
2 The Vatican here makes Hermas interrupt the Shepherd, and ask, "How greater than the vine?"
3 [Based on Jas. i. 9-11, 27, and ii. 1-9: introducing the heathen world to just ideas of human brotherhood, and the mutual relations of the poor and the rich.]
4 The translation of the text is based on the Palatine. Lips. Reads: "When the rich man fills out upon the poor." Hilgenfeld amends this: "When the rich man recovers breath upon the poor." Neither gives sense. The Aethiopic has: "But if the rich man lean on the poor;" and the Greek of Hilgenfeld might mean: "When the rich man recovers his breath by leaning on the poor." The Vatican is quite different: "When, therefore, the rich man helps the poor in those things which he needs, the poor man prays to the Lord for the rich man, and God bestows all blessings upon the rich man, because the poor man is rich in prayer, and his prayer has great merit with God. Then the rich man accordingly assists the poor man's things, because he feels that he is fully heard (exaudiri) by the Lord; and the more willingly and unhesitatingly does he give him every help, and takes care that he wants for nothing. The poor man gives thanks toGod for the rich man, because they do their duty in respect to the Lord (a Domino)."
5 [I note this use of the word "influential," because it was formerly denounced as an Americanism.]
7 The sentence in brackets is not in Lips. It is taken from Pal.
1 The Vatican renders this thus: "Why do they resemble those that are, as it were, withered?"
1 Summer. Throne.-Lips. [Rom. viii. 22-24.]
2 The Vatican has, "And all the merry and joyful shall be restored in that age."