But he that received seed in the good ground is he that hears the word, and understands it; who also bears fruit, and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
All Commentaries on Matthew 13:23 Go To Matthew 13
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
De Gen. ad lit., viii, 4: It is certain that the Lord spoke the things which the Evangelist has recorded; but what the Lord spake was a parable, in which itis never required that the things contained should have actually taken place.
City of God, book xxi, ch. 27: Some think that this is to be understood asthough the saints according to the degree of their merits delivered some thirty, some sixty, some an hundred persons; and this they usually suppose will happen on the day of judgment, not after the judgment. But when this opinion was observed to encourage men in promising themselves impunity, because that by this means all might attain to deliverance, it was answered, that men ought the rather to live well, that each might be found among those who were to intercede for the liberation of others, lest these should be found to be so few that they should soon have exhausted the number allotted to them, and thus there would remain many unrescued from torment, among whom might be found all such as inmost vain rashness had promised themselves to reap the fruits of others.
Quaest Ev., i, 9: Otherwise; There is fruit an hundred-fold of the martyrs because of their satiety of life or contempt of death; a sixty-fold fruit of virgins, because they rest not warring against the use of the flesh; for retirement is allowed to those of sixty years’ age after service in war or in public business; and there is a thirty-fold fruit of the wedded, because theirs is the age of warfare, and their struggle is the more arduous, that they should not be vanquished by their lusts. And in one of these degrees must one be found at the time of his death, if any desires to depart well out of this life.
