[1034] 1 Tim. ii. 14.
[1035] Rev. xii. 9; xx. 2.
[1036] 1 Cor. vi. 15, etc.
[1037] Eph. iv. 15, etc.
[1038] 1 Cor. xv. 54, combined with 2 Cor. v. 4.
[1039] Cp. Cant. xxvi. 11: "Thou art dead, O death, and pierced by the hook thou hast imprudently swallowed, which saith in the words of the prophet, 'O death, I will be thy death! O hell, I will be thy bite.' Pierced, I say, by that hook, to the faithful who go through the midst of thee thou offerest a broad and pleasant path-way into life" (Morison's translation). A very old metaphor. It is thus explained by Rufinus (a.d. 400) in his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (§ 16, Heurtley's translation): "The object of that mystery of the Incarnation ... was that the divine virtue of the Son of God, as though it were a hook concealed beneath the form and fashion of human flesh, ... might lure on the prince of this world to a conflict, to whom offering His flesh as a bait, His divinity underneath might secure him, caught with a hook by the shedding of His immaculate blood.... As, if a fish seizes a baited hook, it not only does not take the bait off the hook, but is drawn out of the water to be itself food for others, so he who had the power of death seized the body of Jesus in death, not being aware of the hook of divinity enclosed within it, but, having swallowed it, he was caught forthwith, and the bars of hell being burst asunder, he was drawn forth as it were from the abyss to become food for others."
[1040] Ps. lxxxix. 48 (vg.).
[1041] 1 John iii. 8.
[1042] 1 John ii. 13, 14.
[1043] Matt. xxv. 41.