That prophecy was fulfilled that says, proclaiming about the church, The daughters of Tyre offer you gifts; all the wealthy among the people plead for your favor,^[1] and so forth, up to the end of the psalm. For no city received the apostle, kept him and sent him on his way with greater kindness than Tyre. Finally, today the place is pointed out where they prayed together on the shore.

In this epistle [to Victor, the bishop of Rome] he [Polycrates] mentions him [John] together with the apostle Philip and his daughters in the following words: For in Asia also great lights have fallen asleep, which shall rise again on the last day, at the coming of the Lord, when he shall come with glory from heaven and shall seek out all the saints. Among these are Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps in Hierapolis, and his two aged virgin daughters, and another daughter who lived in the Holy Spirit and now rests at Ephesus; and moreover John, who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and being a priest wore the sacerdotal plate. He also sleeps at Ephesus. So much concerning their death. And in the Dialogue of Caius which we mentioned a little above,^[1] Proclus . . . speaks thus concerning the death of Philip and his daughters: After him there were four prophetesses, the daughters of Philip, at Hierapolis in Asia. Their tomb is there and the tomb of their father. Such is his statement. But Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, mentions the daughters of Philip, who were at that time at Caesarea in Judea with their father and were honored with the gift of prophecy.

That Philip the apostle dwelt at Hierapolis with his daughters has been already stated. But it must be noted here that Papias, their contemporary, says that he heard a wonderful tale from the daughters of Philip. For he relates that in his time one rose from the dead.

But why did [Agabus] use a belt with his cloak? This was the custom among people of ancient times, before men went on to dress in this soft and loose fashion. For instance, Peter^[1] appears to have been so belted, and Paul as well, for he says, the man who owns this belt. And Elijah^[2] too was dressed thus, and every one of the saints, since they were always in action, either traveling or working earnestly for some other necessity. But this was not the only reason: they did this also to trample on all display and observe every austerity. Indeed this is what Christ called the greatest praise of virtue, when he said, What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces.^[3]

Agabus is imitating the ancient prophets who were accustomed to say, The Lord God says this,^[1] because the Holy Spirit is Lord and God in the same way as the Father and the Son are, and it is impossible to separate the operation of those whose nature and will are one. Hence too we read above, The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work for which I have called them,’^[2] namely, the office of apostle. And Paul himself writes, Paul, an apostle, sent not from people or by people but by Jesus Christ and God the Father.^[3] We have said these things so that no one might believe, following Macedonius,^[4] that the Holy Spirit is a creature or of less authority than the Father or the Son.

When he was about to go up to Jerusalem, Jesus took the twelve aside and spoke to them on the road, ‘Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they shall sentence him to death, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and beaten and crucified, and on the third day he shall rise.^[1] Paul both contemplated Christ, in the face of manifest dangers, proceeding and eagerly going up to Jerusalem with the foreknowledge that he would be handed over to the chief priests and scribes and sentenced to death, and he exhorted us to imitate him as he imitated Christ, as he says, Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.^[2] And he did something similar to what Christ did when he took his disciples aside. For Agabus, taking his belt and girding himself about the hands and feet, said, These things the Holy Spirit says: they will bind in this way the man who owns this belt when he goes off to Jerusalem. When Paul learned of this, in imitation of his teacher, he went up eagerly to Jerusalem.

The battering ram of natural affection, which so often shatters faith, must recoil powerless from the wall of the gospel.

Others were crying, but [Paul] was exhorting them as he grieved for their tears. What are you doing, he says, crying and breaking my heart? Nothing was dearer to him than these people. Because he saw them crying, he grieved, while he cared nothing for his own trials. Let the Lord’s will, he said, be done. You wrong me by doing this, so stop making me grieve. They stopped when he said, You’re breaking my heart. I weep for you, he says, not for my sufferings, on behalf of which I am even willing to die. They said, Don’t go into the theatre, and he did not. Again and again they drew him away and he obeyed. He fled through the window,^[1] but now, though myriads, so to speak, exhort him, and those in Tyre and Caesarea weep and foretell countless trials, he does not allow it. And yet they were foretelling terrible things for him, and, what is more, through the Holy Spirit. They were not holding him back through the Spirit, and they were not simply announcing terrible events to come his way. No, they were afraid for him because he had to go up to Jerusalem. Since they could not convince him not to go, they cried, and then they settled down. You see the love of wisdom, you see the affection. The Lord, he says, will do what is pleasing in his sight.^[2] They realized it was God’s will. Otherwise Paul, who was constantly having to snatch himself from dangers, would not have been so eager.

Tell me, what do you think about that adamant will of Paul? Could weeping break it? Yes, he says, for I can hold out against anything except for love, since it is love that has overcome and rules me. In this he is like God, whom an abyss of waters would not break but teardrops could.

To this sort of opposition, respond as follows: Why are you trying to keep me from the way I have set out on by weeping at the mention of the chains and afflictions that await me when I arrive in Jerusalem? Let it be known that I will follow the Spirit that has made known to me what awaits me and that I am setting out on the road to the city. I do not go ignorant of what will happen there, for I have foreseen it, and I am not being checked from going.^[1] So do not break my heart with your tears. Whoever has been nobly prepared to be courageous enough to have no thought for his own life does not succumb to fear even if someone tries to provoke it. Now among them such dread had come to grip their thinking, and so the apostle said that his heart was being broken. He was not saying that he was weak but that he had come to such a state because of their bitter weeping. One could also say that just as little sins, in their actual commission, seem great to a holy person, so do the initial movements toward them, and so here he says the breaking of his heart is great.

Paul was the guest he welcomed. Perhaps one of you will say, If Paul was given to me as a guest to welcome, I would receive him readily and with great enthusiasm. But look, it is possible for you to welcome Paul’s master as your guest, and you refuse. For he who welcomes, says he, the least among you welcomes me.^[1] Inasmuch as the brother is the least, so much the more is Christ present through him. For he who welcomes the mighty often does so for the sake of vainglory, but he who welcomes the lowly does so honestly, for the sake of Christ. It is even possible for you to welcome the father of Christ, and you refuse. For I was a stranger, and you invited me in.^[2] Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers who believe in me, you did for me.^[3] Even if he is not Paul but a brother who believes and even if he is the least, Christ is present through him. Open your house, take him in. Anyone who receives a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.^[4] So likewise he who receives Christ will receive the reward due to one who welcomes Christ.

This James was the brother of the Lord, that is, the son of Mary, the sister of the Lord’s mother, whom John the Evangelist mentions.^[1] It was he who was appointed bishop by the apostles immediately after the Lord’s passion and ruled the church at Jerusalem for thirty years, that is, until Nero’s seventh year.^[2] Since the Jews were not able to kill Paul, though they very much sought to, soon afterwards, as Festus had died and Albinus had not yet come to the province, they turned their hand against James, who was buried next to the temple, where he had also been thrown down.^[3]

Again Paul describes to them in detail the things relating to the Gentiles. He does this not to indulge in vainglory, God forbid, but because he wishes to show the mercy of God and fill them with great joy.^[1] Look at the result: When they heard it, they glorified God. It was not upon Paul that they bestowed their praise and admiration. For he described everything in such a way as to refer it all to [God].

It is quite clear, I think, that James gave this advice in order to show the falsity of the views supposed to be Paul’s, which certain Jews who had come to believe in Christ, but who were still zealous for the law, had heard about him, namely, that through the teaching of Christ the commandments, written by the direction of God and transmitted by Moses to the fathers, were to be thought sacrilegious and worthy of rejection. These reports were not circulated about Paul by those who understood the spirit in which the Jewish converts felt bound to those observances, namely, because of their being prescribed by a divine authority and for the sake of the prophetic holiness of those ceremonies but not for the attaining of salvation, which has now been revealed in Christ and is conferred by the sacrament of baptism. Those who spread this rumor about Paul were the ones who wished to make these observances as binding as if without them there could be no salvation in the gospel for believers. For they had experienced him as a most vigorous preacher of grace and as one who taught the exact opposite of their view, that one is not justified by these but by the grace of Jesus Christ and that all the ordinances of the law were foreshadowings meant to announce him. That was why they tried to stir up hatred and persecution against him, making him out to be an enemy of the law and of the divine commandments, and there was no more fitting way for him to repel the injustice of this false charge than by performing personally the ceremonies that he was supposed to condemn as sacrilegious. In this way [Paul] would prove two things: that the Jews were not to be prevented from observing these obligations as if they were wrong and that the Gentiles were not to be forced to observe them as if they were necessary.

I say, therefore, that circumcision and other ordinances of this sort were divinely revealed to the former people through the Testament which we call Old, as types of future things, which were to be fulfilled by Christ. When this fulfillment had come, those obligations remained for the instruction of Christians, to be read simply for the understanding of the previous prophecy, but not to be performed through necessity, as if people had still to await the coming revelation of the faith that was foreshadowed by these things. However, although they were not to be imposed on the Gentiles, they were not thereby to be removed from the customary life of the Jews, as if they were worthy of scorn and condemnation. Gradually, therefore, and by degrees, through the fervent preaching of the grace of Christ, by which alone believers were to know that they were justified and saved—not by those shadows of things, formerly future but now present and at hand—through the conversion of those Jews whom the presence of the Lord in the flesh and the times of the apostles found living thus, all that activity of the shadows was to be ended. This was to be enough praise for it, that it was not to be avoided and despised as idolatry was, but was to have no further development and was not to be thought necessary, as if salvation either depended on it or could not be had without it. This is what some heretics thought, who wanted to be both Jews and Christians and could be neither Jews nor Christians. You [i.e., Jerome] were so kind as to warn me very earnestly against that opinion, although I have never held it.

Thus the apostles and the holy disciples of the Savior, in the beginning, allowed converts from Judaism to the life of the gospel to be circumcised according to the law of Moses in order that they would just believe in the Lord. Later, they themselves on their own, filled with worship in the Spirit and with evangelical perfection, rejected the small shadowy observances of the law.

Against this Paul defends himself and shows that he does this not of his choice. How did they persuade him? It was part of the divine plan and condescension on his part. So this was no hindrance to the preaching, since it was they themselves who decided such things. So he does not accuse Peter in any way. For what he himself did here is what Peter did on that occasion when he held his peace and established his doctrine.^[1] And he did not say, But why? It is not necessary to teach those among the Gentiles. It is not enough that he does not preach so there; he had to do something more to persuade them that you observe the law. Condescension is what it is. Do not be alarmed.