Twice or thrice at least, before this time, I had heard words like unto these; when either the disciples or the multitude, marvelling at his mighty works, had hailed Jesus as the Son of God. Also many thousands of times have I heard the like confession made in the accustomed worship of the Church. But never till this day, nor ever after, did I hear the words uttered in the same way. For there seemed to come forth from the mouth of Simon Peter no mere airy syllables, unsubstantial beatings of the wind, but a certain solid truth, able as it were to be seen and touched, and not to be destroyed by force of man. What made the difference I know not: nor know I how to explain the difference, except it came from Jesus himself. For indeed it seemed to me that power passed from Jesus into Peter and gave unto him a strength more than his own, and not human. Yea, again and again, pondering that saying of Simon Peter in my mind, I have thought of the words of Nathanael, how he said that Jesus gave a voice to all visible things even though they be voiceless by nature; and, in the same way, it might have been said also that Jesus had power to give a kind of light to sounds: such brightness did he seem to cast upon the words of Simon Peter, insomuch that the words, though old, seemed new, yea quite new, and never heard before. For the tongue and the voice seemed the tongue and the voice of Peter, but the spirit and the light thereof seemed to proceed from Jesus; so that one scarce knew whether it were truer to say that it was Jesus speaking through Peter, or that it was Peter speaking in the spirit of Jesus.