to the case of the catechumens, whose sins have not yet been forgiven, but will be when they are
SERMON 212 139
3. Rather oddly, Augustine changes Matthew's single dealer into a company of them, and his plural pearls into a single one! The explanation of the latter change is that he has in mind the one pearl of great price of the next verse.
4. Again he modifies his text, from the past tense to the future, because the catechumens he is addressing, not yet having been baptized, have not yet received the Holy Spirit.
5. See 1 Tm 1:17; 6:15-16; Col 1:15.16.
6. Here the words of the creed are clearly being paraphrased, not quoted; they are being fitted to the case of the catechumens, whose sins have not yet been forgiven, but will be when they are baptized.
7. Again, presumably, a slight paraphrase of the words of the creed.
8. He is thinking, I suppose, of what the body of the risen Christ could do and did, such as suddenly appearing and disappearing; and he is saying that the bodies of the just will have the same facility in the resurrection.
9. He preached before the creed was formally "handed over"—recited, no doubt, by the cate¬ chists to their charges in groups or classes. In this sermon he has not in fact quoted the whole of it. He does so in Sermon 213, which was probably preached several years before.
10. This was an old discipline, possibly intended in bygone days to stop the creed coming to the knowledge of persecutors and scoffers. The only reason for it Augustine can now give is a purely symbolic one.
11. This last phrase reads rather oddly, especially in the Latin, and should perhaps be omitted, as it is by the Maurists.
12. Referring to the stone tablets of the law. 13. See Gal 5:6.