Where is then the blessedness you spoke of? for I bear you witness, that, if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Your blessedness. You beatified me for my sufferings for the faith, and as it were said to yourselves: Happy are we in having such an Apostle! "Happy they who have the privilege of hearing and seeing Paul!" S. Augustine is said to have wished to see three things—Christ on earth in the flesh, Rome at the height of her power, and Paul thundering in his preaching. S. Paul now asks the Galatians what had become of their former opinion of him; why they had so soon changed their minds, and given up their love for him, which was once ardent enough to make them pluck out their eyes for him; and inquires whether he had become their enemy for telling them the truth, viz, that no one is justified by the law, but only by faith in Christ.
You were satisfied at the time when you received the gospel, because you were zealous at the outset. Yet now, since I do not see the finishing of the edifice, I am forced to say, “where is your satisfaction?” Epistle to the Galatians–.
Here he shows perplexity and amazement, and desires to learn of themselves the reason of their change. Who, says he, has deceived you, and caused a difference in your disposition towards me? Are you not the same who attended and ministered to me, counting me more precious than your own eyes? What then has happened? Whence this dislike? Whence this suspicion? Is it because I have told you the truth? You ought on this very account to pay me increased honor and attention; instead of which I have become your enemy, because I tell you the truth,— for I can find no other reason but this. Observe too what humbleness of mind appears in his defence of himself; he proves not by his conduct to them, but by theirs to him that his language could not possibly have proceeded from unkind feeling. For he says not; How is it supposable that one, who has been scourged and driven about, and ill-treated a thousand things for your sakes, should now have schemes against you? But he argues from what they had ...
