Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Matthew 13:3
There are 14 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 262, footnote 4 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Justin Martyr (HTML)
Dialogue with Trypho (HTML)
Chapter CXXV.—He explains what force the word Israel has, and how it suits Christ. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2436 (In-Text, Margin)
... you what is the force of the name Israel.” And as they were silent, I continued: “I shall tell you what I know: for I do not think it right, when I know, not to speak; or, suspecting that you do know, and yet from envy or from voluntary ignorance deceive yourselves, to be continually solicitous; but I speak all things simply and candidly, as my Lord said: ‘A sower went forth to sow the seed; and some fell by the wayside; and some among thorns, and some on stony ground, and some on good ground.’[Matthew 13:3] I must speak, then, in the hope of finding good ground somewhere; since that Lord of mine, as One strong and powerful, comes to demand back His own from all, and will not condemn His steward if He recognises that he, by the knowledge that the Lord ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 645, footnote 2 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Anti-Marcion. (HTML)
Scorpiace. (HTML)
Chapter XI. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8291 (In-Text, Margin)
... Christian would be subjected? But when He forbids thinking about what answer to make at a judgment-seat, He is preparing His own servants for what awaited them, He gives the assurance that the Holy Spirit will answer by them; and when He wishes a brother to be visited in prison, He is commanding that those about to confess be the object of solicitude; and He is soothing their sufferings when He asserts that God will avenge His own elect. In the parable also of the withering of the word[Matthew 13:3] after the green blade had sprung up, He is drawing a picture with reference to the burning heat of persecutions. If these announcements are not understood as they are made, without doubt they signify something else than the sound indicates; and ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 54, footnote 15 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Hippolytus. (HTML)
The Refutation of All Heresies. (HTML)
Book V. (HTML)
Further Exposition of the Heresy of the Naasseni; Profess to Follow Homer; Acknowledge a Triad of Principles; Their Technical Names of the Triad; Support These on the Authority of Greek Poets; Allegorize Our Saviour's Miracles; The Mystery of the Samothracians; Why the Lord Chose Twelve Disciples; The Name Corybas, Used by Thracians and Phrygians, Explained; Naasseni Profess to Find Their System in Scripture; Their Interpretation of Jacob's Vision; Their Idea of the “Perfect Man;” The “Perfect Man” Called “Papa” By the Phrygians; The Naasseni and Phrygians on the Resurrection; The Ecstasis of St. Paul; The Mysteries of Religion as Alluded to by Christ; Interpretation of the Parable of the Sower; Allegory of the Promised Land (HTML)
... cosmical system is completed; for through these also it began to exist. And this, he says, is what has been declared: “The sower went forth to sow. And some fell by the wayside, and was trodden down; and some on the rocky places, and sprang up,” he says, “and on account of its having no depth (of soil), it withered and died; and some,” he says, “fell on fair and good ground, and brought forth fruit, some a hundred, some sixty, and some thirty fold. Who hath ears,” he says, “to hear, let him hear.”[Matthew 13:3-9] The meaning of this, he says, is as follows, that none becomes a hearer of these mysteries, unless only the perfect Gnostics. This, he says, is the fair and good land which Moses speaks of: “I will bring you into a fair and good land, into a land ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, page 118, footnote 2 (Image)
Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix
Hippolytus. (HTML)
The Refutation of All Heresies. (HTML)
Book VIII. (HTML)
Docetic Notion of the Incarnation; Their Doctrines of Æons; Their Account of Creation; Their Notion of a Fiery God. (HTML)
And these (heretics) suppose that this is what is spoken by the Saviour: “A sower went forth to sow; and that which fell on the fair and good ground produced, some a hundred-fold, and some sixty-fold, and some thirty-fold.”[Matthew 13:3-8] And for this reason, the (Docetic) says, (that the Saviour) has spoken the words, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” because these (truths)are not altogether rumours. All these Æons, both the three and all those infinite (Æons which proceed) from these indefinitely, are hermaphrodite Æons. All these, then, after they had been increased and magnified, and had sprung from that ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8, page 118, footnote 2 (Image)
Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocryphal Gospels and Acts, Syriac Documents
Pseudo-Clementine Literature. (HTML)
The Recognitions of Clement. (HTML)
Book III. (HTML)
Simon Claims the Fulfilment of Peter's Promise. (HTML)
... about this.” Then Peter said: “If I were asked to speak of these things only on your account, who come only for the purpose of contradicting, you should never hear a single discourse from me; but seeing it is necessary that the husbandman, wishing to sow good ground, should sow some seeds, either in stony places, or places that are to be trodden of men, or in places filled with brambles and briers (as our Master also set forth, indicating by these the diversities of the purposes of several souls),[Matthew 13:3] I shall not delay.”
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 68, footnote 36 (Image)
Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Apocalypses, Visio Pauli, Testament of Abraham, Acts of X/P, Zosimus, Aristides, Clement, Origen
The Diatessaron of Tatian. (HTML)
The Diatessaron. (HTML)
Section XVI. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1168 (In-Text, Margin)
[22] And after that, Jesus went out of the house, and sat on the sea shore. And there [23] gathered unto him great multitudes. And when the press of the people was great upon him, he went up and sat in the boat; and all the multitude was standing on the [24] shore of the sea.[Matthew 13:3] And he spake to them much in parables, and said, The sower [25] went forth to sow: and when he sowed, some fell on the beaten highway; and it was [26] trodden upon, and the birds ate it. And other fell on the rocks: and some, where there was not much earth; and straightway it sprang up, because it had no depth in [27] the earth: and when the sun rose, it ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 9, page 433, footnote 12 (Image)
Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Apocalypses, Visio Pauli, Testament of Abraham, Acts of X/P, Zosimus, Aristides, Clement, Origen
Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. (HTML)
Origen's Commentary on Matthew. (HTML)
Book XI. (HTML)
The Multitudes and the Disciples Contrasted. (HTML)
... brethren stood without, seeking to speak to Him; this was made known to Him by some one to whom He answered, stretching forth His hand not towards the multitudes but towards the disciples, and said, “Behold My mother and My brethren,” and bearing testimony to the disciples as doing the will of the Father which is in heaven, He added, “He is My brother and sister and mother.” And again in another place it is written, “All the multitude stood on the beach and He spake to them many things in parables.”[Matthew 13:2-3] Then after the parable of the sowing, it was no longer the multitudes but the disciples who came and said to Him, not “Why speakest thou to us in parables,” but, “Why speakest thou to them in parables.” Then also He answered and said, not to the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 143, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
The Harmony of the Gospels. (HTML)
Book II (HTML)
Of the Words Which Were Spoken Out of the Ship on the Subject of the Sower, Whose Seed, as He Sowed It, Fell Partly on the Wayside, Etc.; And Concerning the Man Who Had Tares Sowed Over and Above His Wheat; And Concerning the Grain of Mustard Seed and the Leaven; As Also of What He Said in the House Regarding the Treasure Hid in the Field, and the Pearl, and the Net Cast into the Sea, and the Man that Brings Out of His Treasure Things New and Old; And of the Method in Which Matthew’s Harmony with Mark and Luke is Proved Both with Respect to the Things Which They Have Reported in Common with Him, and in the Matter of the Order of Narration. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1025 (In-Text, Margin)
88. Matthew continues thus: “In that day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the seaside: and great multitudes were gathered together unto Him, so that He went into a ship and sat, and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And He spake many things unto them in parables, saying;” and so on, down to the words, “Therefore every scribe which is instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”[Matthew 13:1-52] That the things narrated in this passage took place immediately after the incident touching the mother and the brethren of the Lord, and that Matthew has also retained that historical order in his version of these events, is indicated by the circumstance ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 334, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament. (HTML)
On the words of the Gospel, Matt. xiii. 19, etc., where the Lord Jesus explaineth the parables of the sower. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2507 (In-Text, Margin)
1. yesterday and to-day ye have heard the parables of the sower, in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do ye who were present yesterday, recollect to-day. Yesterday we read of that sower, who when he scattered seed, “some fell by the way side,”[Matthew 13:3-8] which the birds picked up; “some in stony places,” which dried up from the heat; “some among thorns, which were choked,” and could not bring forth fruit; and “other some into good ground, and it brought forth fruit, a hundred, sixty, thirty fold.” But to-day the Lord hath again spoken another parable of the sower, “who sowed good seed in his field. While men slept the enemy ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 391, footnote 10 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament. (HTML)
On the words of the Gospel, Matt. xxi. 19, where Jesus dried up the fig-tree; and on the words, Luke xxiv. 28, where He made a pretence as though He would go further. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2983 (In-Text, Margin)
... literally a fact, not only a story, but a fact; are ye looking for that which was figured in it? “These are the two Testaments.” That then which is spoken figuratively, is a sort of fiction. But since it has some real event represented by it, and the very figure itself has its ground of truth, it escapes all imputation of falsehood. “The sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell by the way side, some fell upon stony places, some fell among thorns, and some fell upon good ground.”[Matthew 13:3] Who went out “to sow,” or when went he out, or upon what “thorns,” or “stones” or “way side” or in what field did he sow? If we receive this as a fictitious story, we understand it in a figurative sense; it is fictitious. For if any sower really ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 19, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John. (HTML)
Chapter I. 15–18. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 43 (In-Text, Margin)
... scorch it, and there descend upon it the rain of daily exhortations and your own good thoughts, by which that is done in the heart which in the field is done by means of harrows, so that the clod is broken, and the seed covered and enabled to germinate: that you bear fruit at which the husbandman may be glad and rejoice. But if, in return for good seed and good rain, you bring forth not fruit but thorns, the seed will not be blamed, nor will the rain be in fault; but for thorns due fire is prepared.[Matthew 13:3-25]
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 11, page 14, footnote 3 (Image)
Chrysostom: Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans
A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (HTML)
Homily II on Acts i. 6. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 43 (In-Text, Margin)
... as thinking that they themselves would be in high honor, if this should come to pass. But He (for as touching this restoration, that it was not to be, He did not openly declare; for what needed they to learn this? hence they do not again ask, “What is the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?” for they are afraid to say that: but, “Wilt Thou restore the kingdom to Israel?” for they thought there was such a kingdom), but He, I say, both in parables had shown that the time was not near,[Matthew 13:1-43] and here where they asked, and He answered thereto, “Ye shall receive power,” says He, “when the Holy Ghost is come upon you. Is come upon you,” not, “is sent,” [to shew the Spirit’s coequal Majesty. How then darest thou, O opponent of the Spirit, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 13, page 119, footnote 2 (Image)
Chrysostom: Homilies on the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon
The Commentary and Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Galatians and Ephesians. (HTML)
Homilies on Ephesians. (HTML)
Ephesians 4:25-27 (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 344 (In-Text, Margin)
Ver. 28. “Let him that stole,”[Matthew 13:3] saith he, “steal no more.”
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 273, footnote 16 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Ctesiphon. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3793 (In-Text, Margin)
... do. You know very well what it is that you teach your pupils in private; and that while you say one thing with your lips you engrave another on your heart. To us, ignorant outsiders you speak in parables; but to your own followers you avow your secret meaning. And for this you claim the authority of scripture which says: “to the multitudes Jesus spake in parables;” but to his own disciples He said: “it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”[Matthew 13:3]