Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
6| For when a great crowd was pressing upon Jesus, he got into one of the boats, it says, the one that was Simon's, and sitting in it he explained things to the crowds. After teaching enough, since he had to add to his words a divine deed too that would profit those who saw it, the Lord bids Peter let down the nets for a catch. He replied: "We have toiled all night and found nothing. But at your word I will let down the nets," and he did what he was told. When "they enclosed a great multitude of fish" and the nets were breaking under the weight of the multitude, they call on those in the neighboring boat to help, and then, hauling the fish up, they fill both vessels, so that they were in danger of sinking. At this Peter was amazed and struck with astonishment, and confessed that he was unworthy of the Savior's coming aboard. And he, as if he had shown him the image of what was to come, makes plain its interpretation too, and Jesus says to him: "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men alive," and to all of them: "Come after me, and I will turn you into fishers of men." Galilean men, plain men, rustics with nothing more than the Syrian tongue, and following besides the lowly and humble trade of fishing: these, fittingly, our Savior promised to make hunters of men and heralds of his own teaching, and he made them so, without breaking his promise, showing the power of God at work in a deed that surpassed all human excellence. For if he had brought over men who were learned and wise, or some of the men of note and wealth among the Jews, and had used them as teachers of his words, it would have been likely that the thing had been devised in a more human way. That, at any rate, is how most men are commonly brought into subjection: either lured with money by the rich, or deceived by the dress of words and the show of wisdom, or overawed by the eminence of famous persons. But he used no such disciples; on the contrary, he used poor and obscure men, unskilled in speech, Syrians in their tongue, lowly and humble in their bearing, and so he was plainly shown by the fact to be using divine power alone. He displayed this first by calling them with a single word and making them his followers, and then by promising to make them seine-fishers and heralds of men, so that in place of the nets they had, they might take from him the seine woven of every kind of word, of the law and the prophets and of his own inspired teaching, cast it into the sea of human life, and draw in as many as they found, filling their rational nets with rational fish of every kind. But these things, heard at that time through a voice, were words and nothing more. Not long after, though, the deed of the divine power appeared, as he fulfilled in deeds the very things foretold in the words, so that in a short time the whole inhabited world of men together gained countless multitudes of those netted by these poor and unlettered men, and every place of Greeks and barbarians was filled with churches, through that one promise of the divine voice, in which he promised not to teach his disciples, but himself to make them fishers of men. So he not only foreknew and foretold what was to come, but he is shown to have been the maker of so great a knowledge; he spoke it in word and did it in deed; he displayed the future through a symbol and an image, and fulfilled it through the working itself. For on those who long before, in the darkness of the light of truth and of the knowledge of God, had toiled through the night and had been able to catch no one for salvation, he shone his own light, and when they were in day and light he orders them to cast the nets into the deep, trusting not their own skill but his word; and they gathered so great a multitude of fish that the instruments of their catch were bursting and the boats were in danger of going to the bottom under the load. And since these things, done in this way, were driving Peter into no ordinary astonishment and fear, the Savior says to him: "Do not let these things astonish you yet. For they are still child's play, images of things to come." For these fish are voiceless and irrational, and these boats and nets are made of lifeless matter; but what they point to is not of that kind. A little later, then, or rather from this very moment, "from now on you will be catching men alive": released from this wretched and unprofitable fishing and becoming a hunter of rational creatures instead of irrational ones, you will draw up those you are to catch no longer out of the sea’s depths but from the salt bitterness of life and from the dark recesses of godlessness and wickedness, into intelligible light and pure air; or rather you will catch them alive, by bringing them life and not death. For the fish of the open sea, which lived before in darkness and in the deep, die as soon as they come into light and air; but those of mankind whom you will catch will pass out of the darkness of ignorance and be taken for a divine life. That is why he says, "From now on you will be catching men alive." The Savior foretold these things by divine power; the same Savior showed them by deeds to be faithful and true. That caster of nets, at any rate, the fisherman, the Syrian, in place of catching fish netted tens of thousands of men in nets of secret words woven by divine power, more than it is possible to take in by number. What is seen is a view of what is unseen. For what the long age of the world before the Savior's divine appearing did not bring forth, what neither Moses, the lawgiver of the Hebrews, nor the prophets of God after Moses, nor countless others who long ago proclaimed the divine teaching to men had been able to achieve, hunters though they were who toiled hard through the whole night before his appearing, this the Galilean, the poor man, the barbarian in speech, that same Peter, achieved. A proof of what was then accomplished by Peter is the churches that shine out to this day, teeming with rational fish far more than the boats did then: such as the church at Caesarea in Palestine, such as the one at Antioch in Syria, such as the one in the very city of the Romans. For Peter himself is recorded as having founded these churches and all those around them; and the churches of Egypt, at Alexandria itself, he again established, not indeed in person but through Mark, who had become his disciple. For he himself was occupied with Italy and all the nations around it, and he appointed his pupil Mark teacher and net-fisher of those in Egypt. Turn your mind also to the rest of our Savior's disciples, whom he promised to make fishers of men and so showed his word true by the deed. Even now, at any rate, the same one is still at work and still acts, present in every part of the earth and filling the whole inhabited world of men with his rational nets, drawing up out of the deep of wickedness and godlessness the souls of men from every race of rational fish, barbarians and Greeks, and hauling them up each day and each hour to the light of the divine knowledge he has handed down [….]
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