Page:Lapide vol1.djvu/37

xxxvi GENERAL PREFACE. But the Church has the Seal of God, even the Spirit Himself, who was promised, and has been given to her, that He may abide with her for ever. The Spirit recognizes His own handwriting. He it was who first dictated these four Gospels. And now He makes known to us, by the Church, that He did indite them.”

Matthew. Matthew, who was called by Christ from the receipt of custom to the apostolate, was the first who wrote a Gospel. Blessed Peter Damian, in his sermon on S. Matthew, gives him this eulogium:—“Amongst the greatest saints who have gained their titles of victory in celestial glory by their triumph over the world, Matthew seems to me especially glorious and famous, and to obtain a certain primacy of dignity amongst them. To speak plainly, there is no one after Christ to whom, as it appears to me, the holy universal Church is more indebted. For this is the very cause of the life of the world, that the Gospel has shone upon us. Like a captain, he carried a standard for his followers, and by his example stirred them up to write.”

Cajetan and the Anabaptists are of opinion that S. Matthew wrote in Greek, because Hebrew words—such as Emmanuel; Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?—are translated into Greek. But these may have been added by the Greek translator. SS. Jerome and Augustine, Eusebius, and the rest of the ancients, unanimously affirm that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, and that he did so because he was asked by the Jews, when he was going away amongst the Gentiles, to leave them in writing what he had orally preached to them. This is asserted by S. Chrysostom, in his first Homily. The Auctor Imperfecti adds, “The cause of S. Matthew’s writing was this: at a time of severe persecution in Palestine, when all were in danger of being dispersed, in order that if the disciples were deprived of teachers of the faith, they might not be deprived