Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, &c.— "Ye are not come after me, because ye were convinced by my miracles of the truth of my divine mission, and are now disposed to hearken to my doctrine, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Having been once fed, you expect that I will feed you frequently by miracle; and the satisfaction which you found in that meal, has made you conceive great hopes of temporal felicity under my administration. These are the views with which you are following me: but you are entirely mistaken in them; for your happiness does not consist in the meat that perisheth, neither is it that sort of meat which the Messiah will give you: wherefore you ought not to labour so much for the meat which perisheth, John 6:27 which nourishes and delights the body only, as for the meat that endureth to everlasting life,—divine knowledge and grace, which invigorate all the faculties of the soul, and can alone prepare it for eternal glory. Neither ought you to follow the Son of man, the Messiah, with a design to obtain the meat that perisheth, but in expectation of being fed with the meat that endureth unto everlasting life; for it is that meat which the Son of man will give you: for him hath God the Father sealed for the great work of redemption: and by the miracle of the loaves, he particularly shews you that he has authorized me, the Son of man, to bless you with the meat enduring to everlasting life, the food of your souls." The epithet of Father is elegantly given to God the Father in this passage, as it expresses the relation, that he stands in to his eternal Son, as the person who in the preceding clause is called the Son of man.

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