Tractates on the Gospel of John
168 ST. AUGUSTINE floods; when these have come, they carry those men away before they throw down the houses. Therefore, there is only one security: both to build, and to build upon rock. If you wish to hear and not do, you build, but you build a ruin; when temptation comes, moreover, it throws down the house and carries you off together with your ruin. But if you do not hear, you are exposed; you are yourself dragged down by those temptations. Hear, then, and do; it is the one remedy. (4) How many men, today, perhaps, by hearing and not doing have been swept away by the torrent of this celebration? For by hearing and not doing, the torrent, this annual festivity itself, has come; its stream has been filled, and it will pass by and dry up. But woe to that man whom it has carried away! Therefore, my beloved people, know that, unless a man both hear and do, he does not build upon rock; he has no part in so great a name which the Lord has so commended.
(5) For he has drawn your attention. For, if Peter had this name before, you would not in that case see the mystery of the rock, and you would think that he was called that name before by chance, not by the providence of God. T hus he wished him to be called another name first, so that from the very change of name the vital force of the mystery might be commended.
15. "And on the next day he wanted to set out for Galilee, and he finds Philip. He says to him, Tollow me.' Now he was from the town of Andrew and Peter. And Philip finds
Nathanael." (Philip has already been called by the Lord.) "And he said to him, 'We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets wrote, Jesus, the son of Joseph.'" He was called the son of him to whom his mother had been betrothed.^^ For that he had been conceived and born with her virginity undefiled, all Christians know well from the gospel. Philip said this to Nathanael; he also added the place, "of Nazareth. And Nathanael said to him, 'Something good can come out of Nazareth.'" What is meant, brothers? Not as some express it; for it is usual for it to be expressed, "Can anything