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Matt. 6:22-23 (Part 1)

6:22ff TATIAN: The lamp of the body is the eye: if your eye is sound, your whole body also shall be light. But if your eye be evil, all your body shall be dark. And if the light which is in you is darkness, how great is your darkness! Be watchful that the light which is in you is not darkness. Because if your whole body is light, and has no part dark, it shall all be light, as the lamp gives light to you with its flame.  The Diatessaron, 9.58.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Feminine motions, dissoluteness, and luxury, are to be entirely prohibited. . . . The steps of harlotry do not lean to the truth; for they do not approach the paths of life. Her tracks are dangerous, and not easily known.  The eyes especially are to be sparingly used, since it is better to slip with the feet than with the eyes. Accordingly, the Lord very summarily cures this malady: “If your eye offends you, cut it out,” He says, dragging lust up from the foundation. But languishing looks, and ogling, which is to wink with the eyes, is nothing else than to commit adultery with the eyes, lust skirmishing through them. For of the whole body, the eyes are first destroyed. “The eye contemplating beautiful objects, gladdens the heart;” that is, the eye which has learned rightly to see, gladdens. “Winking with the eye, with guile, heaps woes on men.”  Such they introduce the effeminate Sardanapalus, king of the Assyrians, sitting on a couch with his legs up, fumbling at his purple robe, and casting up the whites of his eyes. Women that follow such practices, by their looks offer themselves for prostitution. “For the light of the body is the eye,” says the Scripture, by which the interior illuminated by the shining light appears. Fornication in a woman is in the raising of the eyes.  
The Instructor, 2.288.

6:23 ORIGEN: To see God belongs to the pure heart, out of which no longer proceed “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, the evil eye,” or any other evil thing.  Against Celsus, 4.624.

© OTR 2023