with knowledge, again distinguished by infant milk? Does not this, as explaining a parable, mean something like this, and is not the expression to be read somewhat to the following effect: “_I have fed you with milk in Christ_;” and after a slight stop, let us add, “as children,” that by separating the words in reading we may make out some such sense as this: I have instructed you in Christ with simple, true, and natural nourishment,--namely, that which is spiritual: for such is the nourishing substance of milk swelling out from breasts of love. So that the whole matter may be conceived thus: As nurses nourish new-born children on milk, so do I also by the Word, the milk of Christ, instilling into you spiritual nutriment. Thus, then, the milk which is perfect is perfect nourishment, and brings to that consummation which cannot cease. Wherefore also the same milk and honey were promised in the rest. Rightly, therefore, the Lord again promises milk to the righteous, that the Word may be clearly shown to be both, “the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end;”[230] the Word being figuratively represented as milk. Something like this Homer oracularly declares against his will, when he calls righteous men milk-fed (γαλακτοφάγοι). So also may we take the scripture: “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ;”[231] so that the carnal may be understood as those recently instructed, and still babes in Christ. For he called those who had already believed on the Holy Spirit spiritual, and those newly instructed and not yet purified carnal; whom with justice he calls still carnal, as minding equally with the heathen the things of the flesh: “For whereas there is among you envy and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?”[232] “Wherefore also I have given you milk to drink,” he says; meaning, I have instilled into you the knowledge which, from instruction, nourishes up to life eternal. But the expression, “I have given you to drink” (ὲπότισα), is the symbol of perfect appropriation. For those who are full-grown are said to drink, babes to suck. “For my blood,” says the Lord, “is true drink.”[233] In saying, therefore, “I have given you milk to drink,” has he not indicated the knowledge of the truth, the perfect gladness in the Word, who is the milk? And what follows next, “not meat, for ye were not able,” may indicate the clear revelation in the future world, like food, face to face. “For now we see as through a glass,” the same apostle says, “but then face to face.”[234] Wherefore also he has added, “neither yet are ye now able, for ye are still carnal,” minding the things of the flesh,--desiring, loving, feeling jealousy, wrath, envy. “For we are no more in the flesh,”[235] as some suppose. For with it [they say], having the face which is like an angel’s, we shall see the promise face to face. How then, if that is truly the promise after