When we heard these words we all looked that Jesus should either rebuke the Prophet for his want of faith, or else make some comfortable answer, saying that he would come with speed and deliver the Prophet from his bonds. Howbeit Jesus made no answer, but continued his exhortation; and he drove out certain unclean spirits, and forgave sins. But when he had ended these things, he called to the disciples of John, and he repeated to them those passages of the prophets which describe the signs of Redemption, and in particular the prophecy of Isaiah: how the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped to hear the tidings of Redemption, and the eyes of the blind shall be opened to discern the truth of the Lord; and the lame man shall leap as a hart in the paths of salvation; and the tongue of the dumb shall sing the praises of the Lord. And he said unto the two messengers, “Go and show John the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Then he added these words, “Blessed is he who shall not be offended in me.”
When the messengers were departed, Jesus spake to the people concerning John, saying that John (howbeit he might have changed and fallen from his first estate, seeming to be, for the time, unstable as a reed or pliant as a courtier) was, none the less, truly a prophet, yea, and the greatest of prophets, inasmuch as he was sent by God as the herald of the Redeemer. Then he added thereto a certain saying which filled us all with amazement: yea, and even now after forty years, though I be enlightened with the Holy Spirit, yet can I not choose but be amazed thereat. For the words were these: “Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.”
When the congregation brake up, many of the people said among themselves that this was an hard saying. Others asked what Jesus meant by dividing them that were “born of women” from them that are in the Kingdom of Heaven; and whether the former meant the living and the latter meant the dead. Now I understood (for Nathanael had instructed me) that Jesus put a difference between them which are born of flesh and blood, and them which are born of the Spirit; wherefore I partly perceived the meaning of his saying, namely, that the kingdom of the Law and of the Prophets now had an end, and that the kingdom of the Spirit of God was at hand; and that the greatest in the former kingdom was less than the least in the latter. Likewise I understood Jesus to say that the sending of this message and the moving of Jesus to take up the arms of the flesh argued in John a certain nature of flesh; as if he thereby shewed himself to be born not of the New Kingdom, but of the Old Kingdom of flesh and blood, albeit the greatest therein. Yet for all this, that such an one as Jesus of Nazareth, whose gentleness and meekness (albeit mixed at all times with a certain royal carriage and demeanour) for the most part exceeded the meekness of a little child, should notwithstanding seem to rate so low the greatest of all the prophets of Israel, and exalt so high the meanest of all the citizens in the Kingdom that was to come (which also seemed perforce to include a certain magnifying of himself as being chief in that Kingdom); this, I say, for all my poising and pondering, still perplexed and distracted my mind, as a thing new and strange, and (I had almost said) monstrous to human reason.