But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another.
All Commentaries on Galatians 5:15 Go To Galatians 5
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
But if ye bite and devour one another. Beware, if you attack one another with calumnies, lest you be mutually consumed. Two men calumniating and enviously pursuing each other are like two dogs fighting, and biting each other. They consume each other, nay, they devour themselves. Well said the poet: "Than envy nothing is more just, for it forthwith bites and tortures its author." And therefore: "Than envy not even Sicilian tyrants have found a greater torment." See my notes on Philippians 1:18, where I enumerate the properties of envy. Wisely and piously said S. Augustine (Sent179): "To a religious man it ought to be little not to excite enmities, or to excite them only by awkward speech; he ought to strive to extinguish them by seasonable discourse."
