They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
All Commentaries on Mark 16:18 Go To Mark 16
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
For what else are hearing, reading and copiously depositing things in the memory, than several stages of drinking in thoughts? The Lord, however, foretold concerning his faithful followers, that even “if they should drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them.” And thus it happens that they who read with judgment, and bestow their approval on whatever is commendable according to the rule of faith, and disapprove of things which ought to be repudiated, even if they commit to their memory heretical statements which are declared to be worthy of disapproval, they receive no harm from the poisonous and depraved nature of these sentences.
