that miracle He retired to a mountain that He might not be held by the multitude, who sought to make Him a king, it is clear that He had come down from the mountain when He fed them. Nor do Matthew’s words, He went up into a mountain alone to pray, disagree with this, though John says, When he knew that they would come to make him a king, he withdrew into a mountain himself alone. (John 6:15.) For the cause of His praying is not contrary to the cause of His retiring, for herein the Lord teaches us that we have great cause for prayer when we have cause for flight. Nor, again, is it contrary to this that Matthew says first, that He bade His disciples go into the boat, and then that He sent the multitudes away, and went into a mountain alone to pray; while John relates that He first withdrew to the mountain, and then, when it was late, his disciples went down to the sea, and when they had entered into a boat, &c. for who does not see that John is relating as afterwards done by His disciples what Jesus had commanded before He retired into the mountain?" Pseudo-Augustine: " Mystically; The mountain is loftiness. But what is higher than the heavens in the world? And Who it was that ascended into heaven, that our faith knows. Why did He ascend alone into heaven? Because no man has ascended into heaven, but He that came down from heaven. For even when He shall come in the end, and shall have exalted us into heaven, He will yet ascend alone, inasmuch as the head with its body is One Christ, and now the head only is ascended. He went up to pray, because He is ascended to make intercession to His Father for us." Hilary of Poitiers: "Or, that He is alone in the evening, signifies His sorrow at the time of His passion, when the rest were scattered from Him in fear." Jerome: "Also He ascends into the mountain alone because the multitude cannot follow Him aloft, until He has instructed it by the shore of the sea." Augustine: " But while Christ prays on high, the boat is tossed with great waves in the deep; and forasmuch as the waves rise, that boat can be tossed; but because Christ prays, it cannot