Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out?
Read Chapter 17
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
In this chapter the Lord urged us to pray when he said, “Because of your little faith you could not cast out this demon.” For urging us to prayer he thus concluded, “This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” If a man prays so that he may throw out someone else’s demon, how much more so that he may cast out his own avarice? How much more so that he may cast out his own drunkenness? How much more so that he may cast out his own dissipation? How much more so that he may cast out his own impurity? How great are the sins in human beings! If they persevere in them, they do not allow them to enter the kingdom of heaven! Sermon
If you have faith as a grain of mustard-seed. Christ insinuates to his apostles, as if they had not yet faith enough to work great miracles, which require a firm faith joined with a lively confidence in God. The mustard-seed is brought in with an allusion to its hot and active qualities. (Witham)
That is, a perfect faith; which, in its properties and its fruits, resembles the grain of mustard-seed in the parable. (Chap. xii. 31.) (Challoner)
By faith is here understood, not that virtue by which we assent to all things that are to be believed of Christ, the first, of the theological virtues, in which the apostles were not deficient, but that confidence in the power and goodness of God, that he will on such an occasion exert these, his attributes, in favour of the supplicant. To have a true faith of this kind, and free from all presumption, is a great and high privilege, which the Holy Spirit breathes into such only as he pleases. (Jansenius)
Examples of this efficacious faith are giv...
The disciples are surprised that they could not throw out the demon. All power, not only of besting demons but even of raising the dead, had been given them. Furthermore, because the law was soon to be transcended, Jesus says, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you?” He does not seem to be saying this to those whom he had set apart. Those who did not have faith were going to lose the very law that they had. If they had had this faith within them, they would have been like the grain of mustard seed. By the power of the Word they would have thrown out this burden of sins and the heavy mass of their unbelief. They would have transferred it, like a mountain into the sea, to the activity of the pagans and secular people.
The apostles were afraid that they had lost the grace against demons that had been given to them; this is why they asked Jesus in private and with great anxiety. But the Lord reproves them for being imperfect in faith, saying, "Because of your unbelief. For if you had fervent, ardent faith, you would accomplish great things even though they appeared to be small." The location of the mountains which the Apostles moved is nowhere recorded, yet it is likely that they did move them, but the event was not written down; for not everything was written down. Or, by another interpretation, they did not move a mountain because there had been no occasion to do so, but they did even greater things than that. Note how the Lord said, Ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence, in other words, the mountain shall move when you say the word. But the Apostles did not say the word as there was neither occasion nor necessity, and so they did not move mountains. But if indeed they had spoken, they would...
