Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

¹⁰ And how distinguish we (as might be answered) who are “swine,” and who are “dogs”? This has been shown in the case of this woman. For He only answered to her entreaties, “It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.” You are a dog, you are one of the Gentiles, you worship idols. But for dogs what is so proper as to lick stones? “It is not” therefore “meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.” Had she retired after these words, she had gone away as she had come, a dog; but by knocking she was made of a dog one of human kind. For she persevered in asking, and from that reproach as it were she manifested her humility, and obtained mercy.

For she was not excited, nor incensed, because she was called a dog, as she asked the blessing, and prayed for mercy, but she said, “Truth, Lord;” “You have called me a dog, and truly a dog I am, I acknowledge my name: it is the Truth that speaks: but I ought not on that account to be refused this blessing. Verily I am a dog; 'yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.' It is but a moderate and a small blessing I desire; I do not press to the table, I only seek for the crumbs.”