11. Christ continues using the solemn form of asseveration. *What we know.* The plural is used not of Himself and the Holy Spirit, nor of Himself and the Prophets, nor of all born of the Spirit, nor of the Three Persons of the Trinity, but simply as a plural of majesty. *What we have seen.* Sight, says St. Chrys. on this verse, we consider the most certain of all the senses, so that when we say we saw such a thing with our eyes, we seem to compel men to believe us. In like manner, Christ, speaking after the manner of men, does not indeed mean that He has seen actually with the bodily eye the mysteries He reveals, but it is manifest that He means He has the most certain and absolute (and we may add, immediate: see above on i. 18) knowledge of them. In these words, then, Christ insists upon His authority to teach, and His claim to be believed. 12. Si terrena dixi vobis, et 12. If I have spoken to you non creditis: quomodo, si earthly things, and you dixero vobis coelestia, believe not: how will you credetis? believe if I shall speak to you heavenly things? 12. If you will not believe Me when I teach you the comparatively elementary doctrine of Baptism, which regards the regeneration of man here on earth, how shall you believe if I go on to speak of truths more sublime, more removed from the realms of sense and human comprehension? The spiritual vision of Nicodemus was hardly able to bear the first ray of truth; how then was it to bear the full flood of the light of higher revelation? 13. Et nemo ascendit in 13. And no man hath ascended coelum, nisi qui descendit de into heaven, but he that coelo, Filius hominis, qui est descended from heaven, the son in coelo. of man who is in heaven. 13. The meaning is: No one was in heaven except Him who has descended from heaven, and now speaks to you; namely, the Son of Man, who still remains in heaven. In this view, which is that of St. Thomas, Toletus, and Beelen, Christ speaks of Himself as _having ascended_ into heaven only to accommodate His language to human ideas, which conceive of _ascent_ to heaven as necessary, in order to our being there. The Son of Man, *as Son of God*, had, of course, been there from all eternity and needed not to ascend. Some think that Christ here begins to explain the “heavenly things” referred to in the preceding verse; but a more probable connection is the following:—He had said: how shall you believe heavenly things from Me since you question even the elementary truths which I tell you? And yet from Me alone you must learn such things, for no one else has been in heaven, so as to know and be able to teach you the mysteries of God.