Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
14| That is why the Lord lays bare so very clearly the differences in the souls of those who were to receive his teaching in the times that followed. He foretells that there will be three classes of those who do not receive the seed of his teaching genuinely, and likewise three choirs of the good, who, like fertile ground, bear much and multiply the word. Of those who lose the seeds sown in their souls, he says the causes are three. Either, under the cares of life and zeal for things that are not necessary, under wealth and luxury, they bury the seed in themselves and are like those choked by thorns; or, having received it not from the depth of their understanding, they are quickly extinguished when trouble overtakes them; or, for a third cause, they become responsible for the loss of the seed in them by giving up their ears without restraint to those who want to deceive them and snatch away the seeds sown in their souls. These, then, are deprived of fruit-bearing toward God in no other way than by one of the ways described. But those who are disposed in the opposite way, who have received the saving seed with a pure soul and a genuine purpose, multiply their own fruits in turn, according to the power of their souls.
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