Ver. 12. While I was with them, I kept them in thy name.[5] He still speaks, says St. Chrysostom, as man, and after a human manner, by mentioning the advantage they seemed to enjoy, as long as he conversed visibly with them on earth, not that his invisible presence should be less beneficial to them. — And none of them hath perished, except the son of perdition, the wretched Judas, whose fall was foretold in the Scriptures. (Psalm cviii.) He hath perished, that is, now is about being lost, by his own fault, says St. Chrysostom on this place. And St. Augustine on Psalm cxxxviii. How did the devil enter into the heart of Judas? he could not have entered, had not he given him place. (Witham) — That the Scripture may be fulfilled: this does not any ways shew, that it was the will of God that Judas should be lost; but only that what happened to Judas was conformable to the prophecies, and not occasioned by them. Who will doubt, says St. Augustine, (lib. de Unit. Eccl. chap. ix.) but that Judas might, if he pleased, have abstained from betraying Christ. But God foretold it, because he foresaw clearly the future perversity of his disposition. (Calmet) —See above, (xiii. 18.) one of the principal passages of Scripture relative to the treachery of Judas, in which the traitor’s crime had been predicted.
