MATTHEW X. 29—34 49 expressed in parables, by noon-day speech and with great boldness as upon the housetops, they shall be preached by you before all, before kings and tyrants; and in order to shew them the care that is over you, and to encourage them that nothing shall come upon them except the mandate of God, He says: Are not two sparrows sold for a Sarthing? and one of them shall not Fall to the ground without your Father. Do not suppose that it is by the negligence of God that ye are delivered to trials, but be persuaded that not even little and contemptible birds whose price is @ farthing, that is, ten obols, can fall into the snare, unless they were also created from the first for human uses; how much more does He shew [His] care about you, who are His image and likeness, and of the household of His love, and His worshippers, and were created with free will? But some destroyers of freedom imagine here, that it is evidently not in our hands, but everything is in the hands of God, from this assertion of our Lord, that not even a contemptible sparrow falls into the snare without the Father ; and we say that everything is not in our hands, but some of them are in our hands, some of them in His; it is of our will to choose and to study good things, but the end and the direction are from above, If therefore by Divine energy only the sparrows fall, why is the art of hunters with its instruments required? What man ever saw a sparrow fall upon the ground without the trap and art of the hunter? What is then the force of the word, unless these things were established for the use of men, either as sustenance, or as exercise, or as other things? They shall have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of Heaven, etc. Never have the birds fallen to the carth, nor the fishes gone Up from the sea to the dry land. Nevertheless reason is from God, and by reason reasonable beings have devised such inventions and contrivances, This, / came not to cast peace, but a sword. And how about this passage, that He came to reconcile all that is in Heaven and all that is in the earth? or those words of the prophets, that He shall speak peace with the heathen ? and the Prince of peace? and to His peace there shall be no end? and He is our peace? and My peace I give unto you? Nevertheless He spoke the word for a purpose, and not exhaustively ; because it is He ! PAS Gen. 1.26 Col. 1, 20 Ephr. that has preached peace; and to those who received Him there was peace; £ 29 but because believers were divided from unbelievers, therefore indicating what would come to pass, that fathers would be divided against their sons, because they believed not in the Christ, and sons should contend with their fathers, because they have left the religion of their fathers; that when these GL 7