Acts 17:28

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Ver. 28. For in him we live, &c.] The heathen could say,

" Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo. "

We move] Understand it as well of the motions of the mind as of the body.

And have our being] As the beams have their being in the sun, and an accident in the subject. Scholastici dependentiam creatorum a Creatore partita luci, quae in aere remote Sole extinguitur, partita vasculo aquam contentam circumscribenti, partim sigillo in aqua impresso comparant.

As certain also of your own poets] Note that the apostle nameth not Aratus, whom he citeth, though he were his own countryman, a Cilician; notwithstanding the piety of that poet's beginning, Εκ Διος αρχωμεσθα, or the divineness of his subject, the heavens, a more sublime and pure matter than useth to be in the wanton pages of other poets. Some sentences of heathenish authors are found in Scripture, as the Egyptian spoils furnished the Israelites, and David helped himself with Goliath's sword: so the Holy Ghost strikes the heathens with their own weapons, Propriis pennis configimur, as Julian the Apostate complained, and therefore forbade the Christians to send their children to the heathen schools, lest they should be wounded with their own weapons.