Homilies on First Corinthians

⁶ “Let the prophets speak by two or three, and let the others discern.”

No where has he added, “at the most,” as in the case of the tongues. And how is this, one says? For he makes out that neither is prophesy sufficient in itself, if at least he permits the judgment to others. Nay, surely it is quite sufficient; and this is why he did not stop the mouth of the prophet, as of the other, when there is no interpreter; nor, as in his case he said, “if there be no interpreter let him keep silence,” so also in the case of the prophet, “if there be none to discern, let him not prophesy;” but he only secured the hearer; since for the satisfaction of the hearers he said this, that no diviner might throw himself in among them. For of this also at the beginning he bade them beware, when he introduced a distinction between divination and prophecy, and now he bids them discriminate and spy out the matter, so that no Satanic teacher might privily enter.