Voices and influences
Hilary of Poitiers
He reasoned his way to God, met the prologue of John, and became the West's hammer against Arianism — exiled to Asia Minor for it.
Summary
This site quotes Hilary of Poitiers 40 times across 9 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 367.
- Quoted here most in Matthew: 16 of 40.
Hilary of Poitiers
- Lived
- died 367
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 40 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Hilary of Poitiers died in 367 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
Be with me now in thy faithful spirit, holy and blessed Patriarch Jacob, to combat the poisonous hissings of the serpent of unbelief. Prevail once more in thy wrestling with the Man, and, being the stronger, once more entreat His blessing.
The rest of the quotation
Why pray for what thou mightest demand from thy weaker Opponent? Thy strong arm has vanquished Him Whose blessing thou prayest. Thy bodily victory is in broad contrast to thy soul's humility, thy deeds to thy thoughts.
Genesis 32:28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.” BSB
[Christ] offered himself to the death of the accursed that he might break the curse of the Law, offering himself voluntarily a victim to God the Father, in order that by means of a voluntary victim the curse that attended the discontinuance of the regular…
HOMILY ON PSALM 53(54).13, 367
The rest of the quotation
victim might be removed. Now of this sacrifice mention is made in another passage of the psalms: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body have you prepared for me"; that is, by offering to God the Father, who refused the legal sacrifices, the acceptable offering of the body that he received.
Psalms 40:6 Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but my ears You have opened. Burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not require. BSB
The obvious thing for the Prophet to say was, O God, hear me. But because he is speaking as the mouthpiece of Him, Who alone knew how to pray, we are given a constantly reiterated demand that prayer shall be heard. The words of St.
The rest of the quotation
Paul teach us that no man knows how he ought to pray: For we know not how to pray as we ought.
Psalms 54:2 Hear my prayer, O God; listen to the words of my mouth. BSB
The introduction of a pause marks a change of person. He no longer speaks but is addressed. For now the prophetic utterance assumes a general character.
The rest of the quotation
Thus immediately after the prayer addressed to God, he has added, in order that the confidence of the speaker might be understood to have obtained what He was asking even in the very moment of asking: Behold, God is My helper and the Lord is the upholder of My soul. He has requited evil unto Mine enemies.
Psalms 54:4 Surely God is my helper; the Lord is the sustainer of my soul. BSB
After this there is a return to the Person of God, to Whom the petition was at the first addressed: Destroy them by Your truth. Truth confounds falsehood, and lying is destroyed by truth.
The rest of the quotation
We have shown that the whole of the foregoing prayer is the utterance of that human nature in which the Son of God was born; so here it is the voice of human nature calling upon God the Father to destroy His enemies in His truth.
Psalms 54:5 He will reward my enemies with evil. In Your faithfulness, destroy them. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Hilary of Poitiers 40 times across 9 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Hilary was born at Poitiers in western Gaul about 310, into a wealthy pagan family, and given a full classical education. He came to God the long way — by thinking. He describes working through the question of what a life is for, rejecting the answers he had been given, arriving at the conviction that there must be one eternal, self-existent God, and then meeting the prologue of John's Gospel. He was married and had a daughter before he was baptized, probably in his thirties. Around 350 the people of Poitiers made him their bishop. The Arian controversy reached Gaul, and Hilary would not go along. He refused communion with Saturninus of Arles and the bishops backing the imperial line, and he wrote to the emperor Constantius asking for freedom for the church. In 356 Constantius exiled him to Phrygia in Asia Minor. The exile was the making of him. Cut off from his diocese but left free to read and write, Hilary learned Greek theology at its source and produced On the Trinity in twelve books — the first major Latin treatment of the doctrine, and the book that gave the West its vocabulary for it. He also wrote On the Councils, patiently explaining to Western bishops what the Eastern parties actually meant by their terms, and where the disagreement was real and where it was only language. It was an attempt to keep men from condemning each other over translation. He kept fighting from exile. He asked for a public debate with Saturninus. He attended the eastern council at Seleucia in 359. Finally he wrote Against Constantius, an unsparing attack on the emperor himself. The Eastern bishops concluded he was more trouble in their territory than in his own, and in 360 they sent him home — Sulpicius Severus says they returned the sower of discord to Gaul. In Gaul he did what no one expected: he led the churches back to the Nicene faith without a purge, receiving back bishops who had signed at Rimini rather than deposing them. Then he went to Milan with Eusebius of Vercelli to challenge the Arian bishop Auxentius. He wrote the first Latin hymns for congregations to sing, and commentaries on Matthew and the Psalms. Martin of Tours was his disciple. He died about 367, and Rome named him a Doctor of the Church in 1851. Jerome and Augustine both call him a defense of the church. Sources: Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity and historical fragments (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 9); Jerome, On Illustrious Men, 100; Sulpicius Severus, Chronicle, book II; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. III.
40 quotations across 9 books
Where this voice is quoted
So he got up, took the Child and His mother by night, and withdrew to Egypt,
“Egypt full of idols; for after this enquiry for Him among the Jews, Christ leaving Judæa goes to be cherished among nations given to the vainest superstitions.”
People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region around the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
“The preacher of Christ is clad in the skins of unclean beasts, to which the Gentiles are compared, and so by the Prophets' dress is sanctified whatever in them was useless or unclean.”
But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” “Let it be so now,” Jesus replied.
“John rejects Him from baptism as God; He teaches him, that it ought to be performed on Him as man.”
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew.
“By this that they left their occupation and their father's house we are taught, that when we would follow Christ we should not be holden of the cares of secular life, or of the society of the paternal mansion.”
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
“But the praise of Heaven is eternal, and cannot be carried off by invading thief, nor consumed by the moth and rust of envy.”
But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...”
“Furthermore, so it could be understood that he was in a body and that he could forgive sins and restore health to bodies, Jesus said, "That you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins," then he said to…”
When the crowds saw this, they were filled with awe and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
“It is a very fearful thing to be seized by death while the sins are yet unforgiven by Christ; for there is no way to the heavenly house for him whose sins have not been forgiven.”
When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
“The Jews were seething with envy that the Lord was spending time with publicans and sinners. He declared to them that the words of the law were being concealed under a cloak of faithlessness.”
Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.
“The promulgation of the Law deserved also the first preaching of the Gospel; and Israel was to have less excuse for its crime, as it had experienced more care in being warned.”
On My account, you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.
“And by this their testimony not only was all excuse of ignorance of His divinity taken away from their persecutors, but also to the Gentiles was opened the way of believing on Christ, who was thus devotedly preached by the voices of the confessors among…”
warning them not to make Him known.
“On those whom He healed He enjoined silence, whence it follows, And he charged them that they should not make him known. For his restored health was a witness to each man.”
And a Canaanite woman from that region came to Him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is miserably possessed by a demon.”
“To grasp the inner motive of the Canaanite woman for obtaining what came to pass, we must reflect on the impact of her words.”
They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
“They brought forward seven loaves of bread. The Gentiles received no salvation from the law and the prophets. However, they live because of the grace of the Spirit whose sevenfold light, as noted by Isaiah, is a gift.”
A total of four thousand men were fed, in addition to women and children.
“As that first multitude which He fed answers to the people among the Jews that believed; so this is compared to the people of the Gentiles, the number of four thousand denoting an innumerable number of people out of the four quarters of the earth.”
You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes it sacred?
“For since Christ is come, reliance upon the Law is vain; for not Christ by the Law, but the Law by Christ, is sanctified, in whom it rests as on a seat or throne; so are they fools and blind, who, overlooking the sanctifier, pay…”
While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened.
“The concealment of the Resurrection, and the false allegation of theft, is purchased by money; because by the honour of this world, which consists in money and desire, Christ's glory is denied.”