Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
218 ST. AUGUSTINE goes around to buy the dove; according to his own sales' pitch each one praises what he sells. Let that man's heart be turned away from every seller; let him come where [the dove] is received for free. Under these circumstances they do not blush, brothers, that they have caused so many factions among themselves by their very bitter and malicious quarrels when they attribute to themselves what they are not, when they are elated thinking that they are something whereas they are nothing.^' But what has been fulfilled in them that they do not want to be corrected except what you heard in the Psalm, "They were separated and they did not feel remorse"?
7. Who, then, sell oxen? Oxen are understood as those who have dispensed the Holy Scriptures to us. The oxen were the apostles, the oxen were the Prophets. Wherefore the Apostle says, '"You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treads out the grain.' Is God concerned with oxen? Or does he say this for our sakes? He, in fact, says it for our sakes. For he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes, in the hope of partaking." '^^ Therefore those oxen have left us the record of Scripture. For they did not dispense of their own because they sought the Lord's glory. For what did you hear in the same Psalm? "And let them who will the peace of his servant forever say, 'The Lord be magnified.'" '^^ (2) The servant of God, the people of God, the Church of God. They who will the peace of this Church, let them magnify the Lord, not the servant, "and let them forever say, 'The Lord be magnified.'" Who should say it? "They who will the peace of his servant." That was the clear voice of the people themselves, of the servant himself which you heard in the Psalm in lamentations; and you were moved when you heard it, because you are of them. What was sung by one resounded from every heart. Happy are they who recognized themselves
31. Cf. Gal 6.3.
32. This is part of Augustine's text for Ps 34. 16: it appears identically in En in Ps 57.20.30 (CCL 39.726), although it is not quoted in En in Ps 34.2.8 (CCL 38.317). The Vulgate also gives this text with similar wording as part of verse 16 and in LXX it is part of verse 15.
33. Cf. 1 Cor 9.9—10, quoting Dt 25.4 (NAB 9.8—10). 34. Cf. Ps 34.27.