Tractates on the Gospel of John
TRACTATE 7 161 his father by slaps or scourges, would he not be called proud, a hopeless case, ungrateful for his father's discipline? And why does a human father instruct a human son? That he might not be able to lose the temporal goods which he has acquired for him, which he has gathered for him, which he does not wish him to lose, which he himself who leaves them behind could not keep forever. He does not teach a son with whom he is to co-possess, but one who is to possess after him. My brothers, if the father teaches his son [who will be] his successor, and if he teaches him that he, too, will pass through all those things just as he who was advising will pass through them, how do you wish our Father to instruct us whom we shall not succeed but to whom we shall approach and with whom we shall remain forever in an inheritance which does not decay, nor die, nor experience violent storm? And he is the inheritance and he is the Father.
(4) Shall we possess this one, and ought we not be instructed? Let us, therefore, endure the instruction of the Father. When we have a headache, let us not run to the enchanters, to the fortune-tellers, and to useless remedies.-'' My brothers, shall I not lament for you? Every day I discover these things, and what am I to do? Do I not yet persuade you that for Christians hope must be put in Christ? Look, if someone for whom a remedy was made should die (for how many have died with remedies and how many have lived without remedies!), with what mien has the soul gone to God? It has lost the sign of Christ; it has received the sign of the devil. Or perhaps he may say, "I did not lose the sign of Christ." Therefore you had the sign of Christ together with the sign of the devil.
(5) Christ does not want a share but wants to possess alone what he bought. He bought at so great a price that he may be the sole possessor. You make his partner the devil to whom you had sold yourself through sin. Woe to them of a double heart who give in their hearts part to God and part to the devil! God, angered because a part there has been given to
25. Cf. Tractate 2.1'^. 26. Cf. Tractate ^.i'^ . 27. Cf. Ecdus (Sir) 2.14 (cf. NAB 2.12).