Annotatio CL

”I will give thee the nations for thy inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession.” — Psalm 2:8

Hilary, in the elucidation of this little verse, among other things wrote these: “Christ received the possession of the ends of the earth — that is, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of the heavenly, the earthly, and the infernal,¹ etc.: not the earthly [things] alone, but the supernal and the infernal also are given [him], and those things by which the earth is enclosed. And in the glory of God the Father he is today begotten, being born — that is, remaining before in the form of God, the servile form is honored through the reward of the death-form.” Erasmus, in the Annotations which he appended to the margins of Hilary’s commentaries, asserted that these words of Hilary savour of something Origenist; but since he himself brings no reason for his suspicion, nor can any such thing be deduced from Hilary’s words, let others more learned than I see how much Erasmus’s judgment is to be valued.