and coming unchanged to our nature, shunned not that ordinance of humanity which He had taken on Him, but was obedient to the dispositions of His Father made known by Angels. For even by Angels is declared to Joseph the retreat of the Son into Egypt, so ordained of the Father, and His return again to Judæa. Pseudo-Chrysostom: See how Joseph was set for ministering to Mary; when she went into Egypt and returned, who would have fulfilled to her this so needful ministry, had she not been betrothed? For to outward view Mary nourished and Joseph defended the Child; but in truth the Child supported His mother and protected Joseph. Return into the land of Israel; for He went down into Egypt as a physician, not to abide there, but to succour it sick with error. But the reason of the return is given in the words, They are dead, &c. Jerome: From this we see that not Herod only, but also the Priests and Scribes had sought the Lord's death at that time. Saint Remigius: But if they were many who sought his destruction, how came they all to have died in so short a time? As we have related above, all the great men among the Jews were slain at Herod's death. Pseudo-Chrysostom: And that is said to have been done by the counsel of God for their conspiring with Herod against the Lord; as it is said, Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Saint Remigius: Or the Evangelist uses a figure of speech, by which the plural is used for the singular. These words, the Child's life, overthrow those heretics who taught that Christ did not take a soul, but had His Divinity in place of a soul. Bede: This slaughter of the infants for the Lord's sake, the death of Herod soon after, and Joseph's return with the Lord and his mother to the land of Israel, is a figure showing that all the persecutions moved against the Church will be avenged by the death of the persecutor, peace restored to the Church, and the saints who had concealed themselves return to their own places. Or the return of Jesus to the land of Israel on the death of Herod shows, that, at the preaching of Enoch and Elijah, the Jews, when the fire of modern jealousy shall be extinguished, shall receive the