Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
TRACTATE 1 53 (3) Look and see what he was willing to become on your account, he who "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Why did he become this for you? That you who were unable to chew might suck. Wholly in this way, then, my brothers, understand [the words] : "All things were made through him and without him was made nothing." For through him absolutely every creature, the greater and the lesser, was made; through him were made the things above, the things below; through him were made the spiritual and the corporal. There is no shape, no structure, no union of parts, no substance whatsoever which can have weight, number, measure unless it is through that Word, and by that creator Word to whom it was said, "you have ordered all things by measure and number and weight."
14. Let no one, therefore, deceive you, when you are perhaps annoyed at flies. For some have been scoffed at by the devil and caught with flies. Fowlers, as you know, are accustomed to put flies on snares to deceive hungry birds; so, too, these men have been deceived by the devil with flies.
(2) To show what I mean, one day some fellow was being annoyed by flies. A Manichean found him in his state of annoyance; and when he said that he could not endure flies and hated them with a passion, immediately the Manichean [said], "Who made them?" But because he was in a state of annoyance and hated them, he dared not say, "God made them." However, he was a Catholic. The other man immediately suggested, "If God did not make them, who made them?" "Surely," says he, "I do believe that the devil made flies." And the other immediately [said], "If the devil made the flies, as I see you admit since you understand the matter wisely, who made the bee which is a little larger than the fly?" He dared not say that God made the bee but did not make the fly be-
33. Wis 11.21 (NAB, 11.20).
34. The Latin word is muscipula which literally means "mousetrap," compounded from mus and capere, "to catch a mouse." Although in Late Latin the word had extended its meaning to any kind of trap, still Augustine promotes a word play as though the noun masca, "fly," were also to be seen in the word. A second word play occurs based on the verb capere in the compound words decipere, aucupes, and muscipula.