And if your right eye causes you to offend, pluck it out, and cast it from you: for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.
All Commentaries on Matthew 5:29 Go To Matthew 5
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Here, certainly, there is need of great courage in order to cut off one's members. For whatever it is that is meant by the eye, undoubtedly it is such a thing as is ardently loved. For those who wish to express their affection strongly are wont to speak thus: I love him as my own eyes, or even more than my own eyes. Then, when the word right is added, it is meant perhaps to intensify the strength of the affection. For although these bodily eyes of ours are turned in a common direction for the purpose of seeing, and if both are turned they have equal power, yet men are more afraid of losing the right one. So that the sense in this case is: Whatever it is which you so love that you reckon it as a right eye, if it offends you, i.e. if it proves a hindrance to you on the way to true happiness, pluck it out and cast it from you. For it is profitable for you, that one of these which you so love that they cleave to you as if they were members, should perish, rather than that your whole body should be cast into hell.
