TITLE PREFIXED TO S. MATTHEW’S GOSPEL. xxxiii
is also an allusion to Daniel ix. 24, where it is said that seventy weeks of years must be fulfilled until Christ, that the Holy of Holies may be anointed, because it is shown in this Gospel that the prophecy of Daniel was fulfilled in Christ which was for to come. For Christ is the Holy of Holies, and therefore as of old to the patriarch Jacob, so now to all Christians, His servants, He will give knowledge of holy things;” for His object is our sanctification, “That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve him without fear: in holiness and justice before him, all our days.” (Luke i. 75.)
Gospel, in Greek Evangel, good news, from ευ̉αγγέλλω, I bring good news. So S. Chrysostom. See Budæus, in Pandectas, where he adds that Evangel, by metonyme, signifies a donation, or an offering given for good news. Thus Cicero writes to Atticus, “O, thy sweet letters, for which I confess I owe evangelia!” that is, a reward for good tidings. In Hebrew, Gospel is called besorah, from basar, “flesh,” because besorah is the most joyful tidings of the Word “being made flesh.”
According to Matthew. The words, according to, denote that primarily and chiefly its author is the Holy Spirit, and in the second place S. Matthew. For Matthew was as it were the organ, instrument, and pen of the Holy Spirit, writing the things which the Holy Ghost dictated to him, according to those words in the forty-fourth Psalm, “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.”
2. According to denotes that the Gospel is one and the same, but was written in a fourfold manner by four Evangelists. Therefore the words indicate that the Gospel of S. Matthew is not another Gospel than that of SS. Mark, Luke, and John, but only that there was a different writer, and a different manner of writing the Gospel.
3. It signifies that the Holy Ghost accommodated Himself to the nature and disposition of S. Matthew. The Holy Ghost illu-
