Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Seventh or Final Clause.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
VIII.—The Seventh or Final Clause.
For the completeness of so brief a prayer He
added—in order that we should supplicate not touching the
remitting merely, but touching the entire averting, of acts of
guilt—“Lead us not into temptation:” that is, suffer
us not to be led into it, by him (of course) who tempts; but far be the
thought that the Lord should seem to tempt,8816
as
if He either were ignorant of the faith of any, or else were eager to
overthrow it. Infirmity8817
| 8817 Implied in the one
hypothesis—ignorance. | and malice8818
are characteristics of the devil. For
God had commanded even Abraham to make a sacrifice of his son,
for the sake not of tempting, but proving, his faith; in order through
him to make an example for that precept of His, whereby He was, by and
by, to enjoin that he should hold no pledges of affection dearer than
God.8819
| 8819 i.e. no children even.
The reference is apparently to Matt. x. 37 and Luke
xiv. 26, with which may be
compared Deut. xiii. 6–; 10 and xxxiii. 9. If Oehler’s reading, which I have
followed, be correct, the precept, which is not verbally given till
ages after Abraham, is made to have a retrospective force on him. | He Himself, when tempted by the devil,
demonstrated who it is that presides over and is the originator of
temptation.8820
This passage He
confirms by subsequent ones, saying, “Pray that ye be not
tempted;”8821
| 8821 Luke xxii. 40; Matt. xxvi. 41; Mark xiv.
31. | yet they
were tempted, (as they showed) by deserting their Lord, because
they had given way rather to sleep than prayer.8822
| 8822 Routh refers us to
De Bapt. c. 20, where Tertullian refers to the same event. [Note
also his reference to De Fuga, cap. ii.] |
The final clause, therefore, is consonant, and interprets the sense of
“Lead us not into temptation;” for this sense is,
“But convey us away from the Evil One.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
