If you know these things, happy are you if you do them.
Read Chapter 13
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
If Ye know these things, blessed shall ye be if ye do them. If you know these things—and who is ignorant that a master is greater than his slave?—you shall be blessed if, as you know them, you also act up to your knowledge in practice. Blessed in hope, though not yet in actuality;—blessed ye shall be after death if until then ye continue to do these things, and persevere in following Me, as I know that ye all will persevere excepting only Judas. And Song of Solomon , to indicate this exception, He adds,
If therefore ye understand these things, He saith----that is, "if ye can clearly perceive the meaning of what I am saying,"----blessed are ye if ye do them. For it is not the knowledge of virtue, but rather the practice of it, that may well be pronounced worthy of both love and zeal. And I think that perchance it may be even better never at all to have learned, than after so learning to hamper one's mind with the bonds of indolence, and refuse to carry out in action what one knows to be the best and right course; according to the saying of the Saviour: He that knew not his lord's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with few stripes; but he that knew it, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes. For in the case of a man who has sinned in total ignorance, it would not be at all unseemly for him, if perchance he were being visited with correction for his carelessness, to ask for a partial forgiveness: but in the case of one who knew what he was doing, that knowledge would becom...
