AUGUSTINE . (ubi sup.) Persecuted He says generally, comprehending both reproaches and defamation of character.
5:13
13. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
CHRYSOSTOM . When He had delivered to His Apostles such sublime precepts, so much greater than the precepts of the Law, that they might not be dismayed and say, How shall we be able to fulfil these things? He sooths their fears by mingling praises with His instructions, saying, Ye are the salt of the earth. This shews them how necessary were these precepts for them. Not for your own salvation merely, or for a single nation, but for the whole world is this doctrine committed to you. It is not for you then to flatter and deal smoothly with men, but, on the contrary, to be rough and biting as salt is. When for thus offending men by reproving them ye are reviled, rejoice; for this is the proper effect of salt to be harsh and grating to the depraved palate. Thus the evil-speaking of others will bring you no inconvenience, but will rather be a testimony of your firmness.
HILARY . There may be here seen a propriety in our Lord’s language which may be gathered by considering the Apostles’ office, and the nature of salt. This, used as it is by men for almost every purpose, preserves from decay those bodies which are sprinkled with it; and in this, as well as in every sense of its flavour as a condiment, the parallel is most exact. The Apostles are preachers of heavenly things, and thus, as it were, salters with eternity; rightly called the salt of the earth, as by the virtue of their teaching, they, as it were, salt and preserve bodies for eternity.
REMIGIUS . Moreover, salt is changed into another kind of substance by three means, water, the heat of the sun, and the breath of the wind. Thus Apostolical men also were changed into spiritual regeneration by the water of baptism, the heat of love, and the breath of the Holy Spirit. That heavenly wisdom also, which the Apostles preached, dries up the humours of carnal works, removes the foulness and putrefaction of evil conversation, kills the work of lustful thoughts, and also that worm of which it is said their worm dieth not. (Is. 66:24.)
REMIGIUS . The Apostles are the salt of the earth, that is, of worldly men who are called the earth, because they love this earth.
JEROME . Or, because by the Apostles the whole human race is seasoned.
PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM . A doctor when he is adorned with all the preceding virtues, then is like good salt, and his whole people are salted by seeing and hearing him.
REMIGIUS . It should be known, that in the Old Testament no sacrifice was offered to God unless it were first sprinkled with salt, for none can present an acceptable sacrifice to God without the flavour of heavenly wisdom.
HILARY . And because man is ever liable to change, He therefore warns the Apostles, who have been entitled the salt of the earth, to continue stedfast in the might of the power committed to them, when He adds, If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?
JEROME . That is, if the doctor have erred, by what other doctor shall he be corrected?
AUGUSTINE . (Serm. in Mont. i. 6.) If you by whom the nations are to be salted shall lose the kingdom of heaven through fear of temporal persecution, who are they by whom your error shall be corrected. Another copy has, If the salt have lost all sense, shewing that they must be esteemed to have lost their sense, who cither pursuing abundance, or fearing lack of temporal goods, lose those which are eternal, and which men can neither give nor take away.
HILARY . But if the doctors having become senseless, and having lost all the savour they once enjoyed, are unable to restore soundness to things corrupt, they are become useless; and are thenceforth fit only to be cast out and trodden by men.
JEROME . The illustration is taken from husbandry. Salt, though it be necessary for seasoning of meats and preserving flesh, has no further use. Indeed we read in Scripture of vanquished cities sown with salt by the victors, that nothing should thenceforth grow there.
GLOSS . (ap. Anselm.) When then they who are the heads have fallen away, they are fit for no use but to be cast out from the office of teacher.
HILARY . Or even cast out from the Church’s store rooms to be trodden under foot by those that walk.
AUGUSTINE . (ubi sup.) Not he that suffers persecution is trodden under foot of men, but he who through fear of persecution falls away. For we can tread only on what is below us; but he is no way below us, who however much he may suffer in the body, yet has his heart fixed in heaven.
5:14
14. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
GLOSS . As the doctors by their good conversation are the salt with which the people is salted; so by their word of doctrine they are the light by which the ignorant are enlightened.
PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM . But to live well must go before to teach well; hence after He had called the Apostles the salt, He goes on to call them the light of the world. Or, for that salt preserves a thing in its present state that it should not change for the worse, but that light brings it into a better state by enlightening it; therefore the Apostles were first called salt with respect to the Jews and that Christian body which had the knowledge of God, and which they keep in that knowledge; and now light with respect to the Gentiles whom they bring to the light of that knowledge.
AUGUSTINE . (ubi sup.) By the world here we must not understand heaven and earth, but the men who are in the world; or those who love the world for whose enlightenment the Apostles were sent.
HILARY . It is the nature of a light to emit its rays whithersoever it is carried about, and when brought into a house to dispel the darkness of that house. Thus the world, placed beyond the pale of the knowledge of God, was held in the darkness of ignorance, till the light of knowledge was brought to it by the Apostles, and thenceforward the knowledge of God shone bright, and from their small bodies, whithersoever they went about, light is ministered to the darkness.
REMIGIUS . For as the sun sends forth his beams, so the Lord, the Sun of righteousness, sent forth his Apostles to dispel the night of the human race.