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Apologetic
Begin we, therefore, to prove that the Birth of Christ was announced by prophets; as Isaiah (e.g.,) foretells, “Hear ye, house of David; no petty contest have ye with men, since God is proposing a struggle. Therefore God Himself will give you a sign; Behold, the virgin[1250] shall conceive, and bear a son, and ye shall call his name Emmanuel”[1251] (which is, interpreted, “God with us”[1252]): “butter and honey shall he eat;”[1253]: “since, ere the child learn to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, in opposition to the king of the Assyrians.”[1254]
Accordingly the Jews say: Let us challenge that prediction of Isaiah, and let us institute a comparison whether, in the case of the Christ who is already come, there be applicable to Him, firstly, the name which Isaiah foretold, and (secondly) the signs of it[1255] which he announced of Him.
Well, then, Isaiah foretells that it behoves Him to be called Emmanuel; and that subsequently He is to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, in opposition to the king of the Assyrians. “Now,” say they, “that (Christ) of yours, who is come, neither was called by that name, nor engaged in warfare.” But we, on the contrary, have thought they ought to be admonished to recall to mind the context of this passage as well. For subjoined is withal the interpretation of Emmanuel—“God with us”[1256]—in order that you may regard not the sound only of the name, but the sense too. For the Hebrew sound, which is Emmanuel, has an interpretation, which is, God with us. Inquire, then, whether this speech, “God with us” (which is Emmanuel), be commonly applied to Christ ever since Christ’s light has dawned, and I think you will not deny it. For they who out of Judaism believe in Christ, ever since their believing on Him, do, whenever they shall wish to say[1257] Emmanuel, signify that God is with us: and thus it is agreed that He who was ever predicted as Emmanuel is already come, because that which Emmanuel signifies is come—that is, “God with us.” Equally are they led by the sound of the name when they so understand “the power of Damascus,” and “the spoils of Samaria,” and “the kingdom of the Assyrians,” as if they portended Christ as a warrior; not observing that Scripture premises, “since, ere the child learn to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, in opposition to the king of the Assyrians.” For the first step is to look at the demonstration of His age, to see whether the age there indicated can possibly exhibit the Christ as already a man, not to say a general. Forsooth, by His babyish cry the infant would summon men to arms, and would give the signal of war not with clarion, but with rattle, and point out the foe, not from His charger’s back or from a rampart, but from the back or neck of His suckler and nurse, and thus subdue Damascus and Samaria in place of the breast. (It is another matter if, among you, infants rush out into battle,—oiled first, I suppose, to dry in the sun, and then armed with satchels and rationed on butter,—who are to know how to lance sooner than how to lacerate the bosom!)[1258] Certainly, if nature nowhere allows this,—(namely,) to serve as a soldier before developing into manhood, to take “the power of Damascus” before knowing your father,—it follows that the pronouncement is visibly figurative. “But again,” say they, “nature suffers not a ‘virgin’ to be a parent; and yet the prophet must be believed.” And deservedly so; for he bespoke credit for a thing incredible, by saying that it was to be a sign. “Therefore,” he says, “shall a sign be given you. Behold, a virgin shall conceive in womb, and bear a son.” But a sign from God, unless it had consisted in some portentous novelty, would not have appeared a sign. In a word, if, when you are anxious to cast any down from (a belief in) this divine prediction, or to convert whoever are simple, you have the audacity to lie, as if the Scripture contained (the announcement), that not “a virgin,” but “a young female,” was to conceive and bring forth; you are refuted even by this fact, that a daily occurrence—the pregnancy and parturition of a young female, namely—cannot possibly seem anything of a sign. And the setting before us, then, of a virgin-mother is deservedly believed to be a sign; but not equally so a warrior-infant. For there would not in this case again be involved the question of a sign; but, the sign of a novel birth having been awarded, the next step after the sign is, that there is enunciated a different ensuing ordering[1259] of the infant, who is to eat “honey and butter.” Nor is this, of course, for a sign. It is natural to infancy. But that he is to receive[1260] “the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria in opposition to the king of the Assyrians,” this is a wondrous sign. Keep to the limit of (the infant’s) age, and inquire into the sense of the prediction; nay, rather, repay to truth what you are unwilling to credit her with, and the prophecy becomes intelligible by the relation of its fulfilment. Let those Eastern magi be believed, dowering with gold and incense the infancy of Christ as a king;[1261] and the infant has received “the power of Damascus” without battle and arms. For, besides the fact that it is known to all that the “power”—for that is the “strength”—of the East is wont to abound in gold and odours, certain it is that the divine Scriptures regard “gold” as constituting the “power” also of all other nations; as it says[1262] through Zechariah: “And Judah keepeth guard at Jerusalem, and shall amass all the vigour of the surrounding peoples, gold and silver.”[1263] For of this gift of “gold” David likewise says, “And to Him shall be given of the gold of Arabia;”[1264] and again, “The kings of the Arabs and Saba shall bring Him gifts.”[1265] For the East, on the one hand, generally held the magi (to be) kings; and Damascus, on the other hand, used formerly to be reckoned to Arabia before it was transferred into Syrophœnicia on the division of the Syrias: the “power” whereof Christ then “received” in receiving its ensigns,—gold, to wit, and odours. “The spoils,” moreover, “of Samaria” (He received in receiving) the magi themselves, who, on recognising Him, and honouring Him with gifts, and adoring Him on bended knee as Lord and King, on the evidence of the guiding and indicating star, became “the spoils of Samaria,” that is, of idolatry—by believing, namely, on Christ. For (Scripture) denoted idolatry by the name of “Samaria,” Samaria being ignominious on the score of idolatry; for she had at that time revolted from God under King Jeroboam. For this, again, is no novelty to the Divine Scriptures, figuratively to use a transference of name grounded on parallelism of crimes. For it[1266] calls your rulers “rulers of Sodom,” and your people the “people of Gomorrha,”[1267] when those cities had already long been extinct.[1268] And elsewhere it says, through a prophet, to the people of Israel, “Thy father (was) an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite;”[1269] of whose race they were not begotten, but (were called their sons) by reason of their consimilarity in impiety, whom of old (God) had called His own sons through Isaiah the prophet: “I have generated and exalted sons.”[1270] So, too, Egypt is sometimes understood to mean the whole world[1271] in that prophet, on the count of superstition and malediction.[1272] So, again, Babylon, in our own John, is a figure of the city Rome, as being equally great and proud of her sway, and triumphant over the saints.[1273] On this wise, accordingly, (Scripture)[1274] entitled the magi also with the appellation of “Samaritans,”—“despoiled” (of that) which they had had in common with the Samaritans, as we have said—idolatry in opposition to the Lord. (It[1275] adds), “in opposition,” moreover, “to the king of the Assyrians,”—in opposition to the devil, who to this hour thinks himself to be reigning, if he detrudes the saints from the religion of God.
Moreover, this our interpretation will be supported while (we find that) elsewhere as well the Scriptures designate Christ a warrior, as we gather from the names of certain weapons, and words of that kind. But by a comparison of the remaining senses the Jews shall be convicted. “Gird thee,” says David, “the sword upon the thigh.”[1276] But what do you read above concerning the Christ? “Blooming in beauty above the sons of men; grace is outpoured in thy lips.”[1277] But very absurd it is if he was complimenting on the bloom of his beauty and the grace of his lips, one whom he was girding for war with a sword; of whom he proceeds subjunctively to say, “Outstretch and prosper, advance and reign!” And he has added, “because of thy lenity and justice.”[1278] Who will ply the sword without practising the contraries to lenity and justice; that is, guile, and asperity, and injustice, proper (of course) to the business of battles? See we, then, whether that which has another action be not another sword,—that is, the Divine word of God, doubly sharpened[1279] with the two Testaments of the ancient law and the new law; sharpened by the equity of its own wisdom; rendering to each one according to his own action.[1280] Lawful , then, it was for the Christ of God to be precinct, in the Psalms, without warlike achievements, with the figurative sword of the word of God; to which sword is congruous the predicated “bloom,” together with the “grace of the lips;” with which sword He was then “girt upon the thigh,” in the eye of David, when He was announced as about to come to earth in obedience to God the Father’s decree. “The greatness of thy right hand,” he says, “shall conduct thee”[1281]—the virtue to wit, of the spiritual grace from which the recognition of Christ is deduced. “Thine arrows,” he says, “are sharp,”[1282]—God’s everywhere-flying precepts (arrows) threatening the exposure[1283] of every heart, and carrying compunction and transfixion to each conscience: “peoples shall fall beneath thee,”[1284]—of course, in adoration. Thus mighty in war and weapon-bearing is Christ; thus will He “receive the spoils,” not of “Samaria” alone, but of all nations as well. Acknowledge that His “spoils” are figurative whose weapons you have learnt to be allegorical. And thus, so far, the Christ who is come was not a warrior, because He was not predicted as such by Isaiah.
“But if the Christ,” say they, “who is believed to be coming is not called Jesus, why is he who is come called Jesus Christ?” Well, each name will meet in the Christ of God, in whom is found likewise the appellation[1285] Jesus. Learn the habitual character of your error. In the course of the appointing of a successor to Moses, Oshea[1286] the son of Nun[1287] is certainly transferred from his pristine name, and begins to be called Jesus.[1288] Certainly, you say. This we first assert to have been a figure of the future. For, because Jesus Christ was to introduce the second people (which is composed of us nations, lingering deserted in the world[1289] aforetime) into the land of promise, “flowing with milk and honey”[1290] (that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nought is sweeter); and this had to come about, not through Moses (that is, not through the Law’s discipline), but through Joshua (that is, through the new law’s grace), after our circumcision with “a knife of rock”[1291] (that is, with Christ’s precepts, for Christ is in many ways and figures predicted as a rock[1292]); therefore the man who was being prepared to act as images of this sacrament was inaugurated under the figure of the Lord’s name, even so as to be named Jesus.[1293] For He who ever spake to Moses was the Son of God Himself; who, too, was always seen.[1294] For God the Father none ever saw, and lived.[1295] And accordingly it is agreed that the Son of God Himself spake to Moses, and said to the people, “Behold, I send mine angel before thy”—that is, the people’s—“face, to guard thee on the march, and to introduce thee into the land which I have prepared thee: attend to him, and be not disobedient to him; for he hath not escaped[1296] thy notice, since my name is upon him.”[1297] For Joshua was to introduce the people into the land of promise, not Moses. Now He called him an “angel,” on account of the magnitude of the mighty deeds which he was to achieve (which mighty deeds Joshua the son of Nun did, and you yourselves read), and on account of his office of prophet announcing (to wit) the divine will; just as withal the Spirit, speaking in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future “angel,” through the prophet: “Behold, I send mine angel before Thy”—that is, Christ’s—“face, who shall prepare Thy way before Thee.”[1298] Nor is it a novel practice to the Holy Spirit to call those “angels” whom God has appointed as ministers of His power. For the same John is called not merely an “angel” of Christ, but withal a “lamp” shining before Christ: for David predicts, “I have prepared the lamp for my Christ;”[1299] and him Christ Himself, coming “to fulfil the prophets,”[1300] called so to the Jews. “He was,” He says, “the burning and shining lamp;”[1301] as being he who not merely “prepared His ways in the desert,”[1302] but withal, by pointing out “the Lamb of God,”[1303] illumined the minds of men by his heralding, so that they understood Himto be that Lamb whom Moses was wont to announce as destined to suffer. Thus, too, (was the son of Nun called) Joshua, on account of the future mystery[1304] of his name: for that name (He who spake with Moses) confirmed as His own which Himself had conferred on him, because He had bidden him thenceforth be called, not “angel” nor “Oshea,” but “Joshua.” Thus, therefore, each name is appropriate to the Christ of God—that He should be called Jesus as well (as Christ).
And that the virgin of whom it behoved Christ to be born (as we have above mentioned) must derive her lineage of the seed of David, the prophet in subsequent passages evidently asserts. “And there shall be born,” he says, “a rod from the root of Jesse”—which rod is Mary—“and a flower shall ascend from his root: and there shall rest upon him the Spirit of God, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of discernment and piety, the spirit of counsel and truth; the spirit of God’s fear shall fill Him.”[1305] For to none of men was the universal aggregation of spiritual credentials appropriate, except to Christ; paralleled as He is to a “flower” by reason of glory, by reason of grace; but accounted “of the root of Jesse,” whence His origin is to be deduced,—to wit, through Mary.[1306] For He was from the native soil of Bethlehem, and from the house of David; as, among the Romans, Mary is described in the census, of whom is born Christ.[1307]
I demand, again—granting that He who was ever predicted by prophets as destined to come out of Jesse’s race, was withal to exhibit all humility, patience, and tranquillity—whether He be come? Equally so (in this case as in the former), the man who is shown to bear that character will be the very Christ who is come. For of Him the prophet says, “A man set in a plague, and knowing how to bear infirmity;” who “was led as a sheep for a victim; and, as a lamb before him who sheareth him, opened not His mouth.”[1308] If He “neither did contend nor shout, nor was His voice heard abroad,” who “crushed not the bruised reed”—Israel’s faith, who “quenched not the burning flax”[1309]—that is, the momentary glow of the Gentiles—but made it shine more by the rising of His own light,—He can be none other than He who was predicted. The action, therefore, of the Christ who is come must be examined by being placed side by side with the rule of the Scriptures. For, if I mistake not, we find Him distinguished by a twofold operation,—that of preaching and that of power. Now, let each count be disposed of summarily. Accordingly, let us work out the order we have set down, teaching that Christ was announced as a preacher; as, through Isaiah: “Cry out,” he says, “in vigour, and spare not; lift up, as with a trumpet, thy voice, and announce to my commonalty their crimes, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Me from day to day they seek, and to learn my ways they covet, as a people which hath done righteousness, and hath not forsaken the judgment of God,” and so forth:[1310] that, moreover, He was to do acts of power from the Father: “Behold, our God will deal retributive judgment; Himself will come and save us: then shall the infirm be healed, and the eyes of the blind shall see, and the ears of the deaf shall hear, and the mutes’ tongues shall be loosed, and the lame shall leap as an hart,”[1311] and so on; which works not even you deny that Christ did, inasmuch as you were wont to say that, “on account of the works ye stoned Him not, but because He did them on the Sabbaths.”[1312]
Concerning the last step, plainly, of His passion you raise a doubt; affirming that the passion of the cross was not predicted with reference to Christ, and urging, besides, that it is not credible that God should have exposed His own Son to that kind of death; because Himself said, “Cursed is every one who shall have hung on a tree.”[1313] But the reason of the case antecedently explains the sense of this malediction; for He says in Deuteronomy: “If, moreover, (a man) shall have been (involved) in some sin incurring the judgment of death, and shall die, and ye shall suspend him on a tree, his body shall not remain on the tree, but with burial ye shall bury him on the very day; because cursed by God is every one who shall have been suspended on a tree; and ye shall not defile the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee for (thy) lot.”[1314] Therefore He did not maledictively adjudge Christ to this passion, but drew a distinction, that whoever, in any sin, had incurred the judgment of death, and died suspended on a tree, he should be “cursed by God,” because his own sins were the cause of his suspension on the tree. On the other hand, Christ, who spoke not guile from His mouth,[1315] and who exhibited all righteousness and humility, not only (as we have above recorded it predicted of Him) was not exposed to that kind of death for his own deserts, but (was so exposed) in order that what was predicted by the prophets as destined to come upon Him through your means[1316] might be fulfilled; just as, in the Psalms, the Spirit Himself of Christ was already singing, saying, “They were repaying me evil for good;”[1317] and, “What I had not seized I was then paying in full;”[1318] “They exterminated my hands and feet;”[1319] and, “They put into my drink gall, and in my thirst they slaked me with vinegar;”[1320] “Upon my vesture they did cast (the) lot;”[1321] just as the other (outrages) which you were to commit on Him were foretold,—all which He, actually and thoroughly suffering, suffered not for any evil action of His own, but “that the Scriptures from the mouth of the prophets might be fulfilled.”[1322]
And, of course, it had been meet that the mystery[1323] of the passion itself should be figuratively set forth in predictions; and the more incredible (that mystery), the more likely to be “a stumbling-stone,”[1324] if it had been nakedly predicted; and the more magnificent, the more to be adumbrated, that the difficulty of its intelligence might seek (help from) the grace of God.
Accordingly, to begin with, Isaac, when led by his father as a victim, and himself bearing his own “wood,”[1325] was even at that early period pointing to Christ’s death; conceded, as He was, as a victim by the Father; carrying, as He did, the “wood” of His own passion.[1326]
Joseph, again, himself was made a figure of Christ[1327] in this point alone (to name no more, not to delay my own course), that he suffered persecution at the hands of his brethren, and was sold into Egypt, on account of the favour of God;[1328] just as Christ was sold by Israel—(and therefore,) “according to the flesh,” by His “brethren”[1329]—when He is betrayed by Judas.[1330] For Joseph is withal blest by his father[1331] after this form: “His glory (is that) of a bull; his horns, the horns of an unicorn; on them shall he toss nations alike unto the very extremity of the earth.” Of course no one-horned rhinoceros was there pointed to, nor any two-horned minotaur. But Christ was therein signified: “bull,” by reason of each of His two characters,—to some fierce, as Judge; to others gentle, as Saviour; whose “horns” were to be the extremities of the cross. For even in a ship’s yard—which is part of a cross—this is the name by which the extremities are called; while the central pole of the mast is a “unicorn.” By this power, in fact, of the cross, and in this manner horned, He does now, on the one hand, “toss” universal nations through faith, wafting them away from earth to heaven; and will one day, on the other, “toss” them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth.
He, again, will be the “bull” elsewhere too in the same scripture.[1332] When Jacob pronounced a blessing on Simeon and Levi, he prophesies of the scribes and Pharisees; for from them[1333] is derived their[1334] origin. For (his blessing) interprets spiritually thus: “Simeon and Levi perfected iniquity out of their sect,”[1335]—whereby, to wit, they persecuted Christ: “into their counsel come not my soul! and upon their station rest not my heart! because in their indignation they slew men”—that is, prophets—“and in their concupiscence they hamstrung a bull!”[1336]—that is, Christ, whom—after the slaughter of prophets—they slew, and exhausted their savagery by transfixing His sinews with nails. Else it is idle if, after the murder already committed by them, he upbraids others, and not them, with butchery.[1337]
But, to come now to Moses, why, I wonder, did he merely at the time when Joshua was battling against Amalek, pray sitting with hands expanded, when, in circumstances so critical, he ought rather, surely, to have commended his prayer by knees bended, and hands beating his breast, and a face prostrate on the ground; except it was that there, where the name of the Lord Jesus was the theme of speech—destined as He was to enter the lists one day singly against the devil—the figure of the cross was also necessary, (that figure) through which Jesus was to win the victory?[1338] Why, again, did the same Moses, after the prohibition of any “likeness of anything,”[1339] set forth a brazen serpent, placed on a “tree,” in a hanging posture, for a spectacle of healing to Israel, at the time when, after their idolatry,[1340] they were suffering extermination by serpents, except that in this case he was exhibiting the Lord’s cross on which the “serpent” the devil was “made a show of,”[1341] and, for every one hurt by such snakes—that is, his angels[1342]—on turning intently from the peccancy of sins to the sacraments of Christ’s cross, salvation was outwrought? For he who then gazed upon that (cross) was freed from the bite of the serpents.[1343]
Come, now, if you have read in the utterance of the prophet in the Psalms, “God hath reigned from the tree,”[1344] I wait to hear what you understand thereby; for fear you may perhaps think some carpenter-king[1345] is signified, and not Christ, who has reigned from that time onward when he overcame the death which ensued from His passion of “the tree.”
Similarly, again, Isaiah says: “For a child is born to us, and to us is given a son.”[1346] What novelty is that, unless he is speaking of the “Son” of God?—and one is born to us the beginning of whose government has been made “on His shoulder.” What king in the world wears the ensign of his power on his shoulder, and does not bear either diadem on his head, or else sceptre in his hand, or else some mark of distinctive vesture? But the novel “King of ages,” Christ Jesus, alone reared “on His shoulder” His own novel glory, and power, and sublimity,—the cross, to wit; that, according to the former prophecy, the Lord thenceforth “might reign from the tree.” For of this tree likewise it is that God hints, through Jeremiah, that you would say, “Come, let us put wood[1347] into his bread, and let us wear him away out of the land of the living; and his name shall no more be remembered.”[1348] Of course on His body that “wood” was put;[1349] for so Christ has revealed, calling His body “bread,”[1350] whose body the prophet in bygone days announced under the term “bread.” If you shall still seek for predictions of the Lord’s cross, the twenty-first Psalm will at length be able to satisfy you, containing as it does the whole passion of Christ; singing, as He does, even at so early a date, His own glory.[1351] “They dug,” He says, “my hands and feet”[1352]—which is the peculiar atrocity of the cross; and again when He implores the aid of the Father, “Save me,” He says, “out of the mouth of the lion”—of course, of death—“and from the horn of the unicorns my humility,”[1353]—from the ends, to wit, of the cross, as we have above shown; which cross neither David himself suffered, nor any of the kings of the Jews: that you may not think the passion of some other particular man is here prophesied than His who alone was so signally crucified by the People.
Now, if the hardness of your heart shall persist in rejecting and deriding all these interpretations, we will prove that it may suffice that the death of the Christ had been prophesied, in order that, from the fact that the nature of the death had not been specified, it may be understood to have been affected by means of the cross[1354] and that the passion of the cross is not to be ascribed to any but Him whose death was constantly being predicted. For I desire to show, in one utterance of Isaiah, His death, and passion, and sepulture. “By the crimes,” he says, “of my people was He led unto death; and I will give the evil for His sepulture, and the rich for His death, because He did not wickedness, nor was guile found in his mouth; and God willed to redeem His soul from death,”[1355] and so forth. He says again, moreover: “His sepulture hath been taken away from the midst.”[1356] For neither was He buried except He were dead, nor was His sepulture removed from the midst except through His resurrection. Finally, he subjoins: “Therefore He shall have many for an heritage, and of many shall He divide spoils:”[1357] who else (shall so do) but He who “was born,” as we have above shown?—“in return for the fact that His soul was delivered unto death?” For, the cause of the favour accorded Him being shown,—in return, to wit, for the injury of a death which had to be recompensed,—it is likewise shown that He, destined to attain these rewards because of death, was to attain them after death—of course after resurrection. For that which happened at His passion, that mid-day grew dark, the prophet Amos announces, saying, “And it shall be,” he says, “in that day, saith the Lord, the sun shall set at mid-day, and the day of light shall grow dark over the land: and I will convert your festive days into grief, and all your canticles into lamentation; and I will lay upon your loins sackcloth, and upon every head baldness; and I will make the grief like that for a beloved (son), and them that are with him like a day of mourning.”[1358] For that you would do thus at the beginning of the first month of your new (years) even Moses prophesied, when he was foretelling that all the community of the sons of Israel was[1359] to immolate at eventide a lamb, and were to eat[1360] this solemn sacrifice of this day (that is, of the passover of unleavened bread) with bitterness;” and added that “it was the passover of the Lord,”[1361] that is, the passion of Christ. Which prediction was thus also fulfilled, that “on the first day of unleavened bread”[1362] you slew Christ;[1363] and (that the prophecies might be fulfilled) the day hasted to make an “eventide,”—that is, to cause darkness, which was made at mid-day; and thus “your festive days God converted into grief, and your canticles into lamentation.” For after the passion of Christ there overtook you even captivity and dispersion, predicted before through the Holy Spirit.
For, again, it is for these deserts of yours that Ezekiel announces your ruin as about to come: and not only in this age[1364]—a ruin which has already befallen—but in the “day of retribution,”[1365] which will be subsequent. From which ruin none will be freed but he who shall have been frontally sealed[1366] with the passion of the Christ whom you have rejected. For thus it is written: “And the Lord said unto me, Son of man, thou hast seen what the elders of Israel do, each one of them in darkness, each in a hidden bed-chamber: because they have said, The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath derelinquished the earth. And He said unto me, Turn thee again, and thou shalt see greater enormities which these do. And He introduced me unto the thresholds of the gate of the house of the Lord which looketh unto the north; and, behold, there, women sitting and bewailing Thammuz. And the Lord said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen? Is the house of Judah moderate, to do the enormities which they have done? And yet thou art about to see greater affections of theirs. And He introduced me into the inner shrine of the house of the Lord; and, behold, on the thresholds of the house of the Lord, between the midst of the porch and between the midst of the altar,[1367] as it were twenty and five men have turned their backs unto the temple of the Lord, and their faces over against the east; these were adoring the sun. And He said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Are such deeds trifles to the house of Judah, that they should do the enormities which these have done? because they have filled up (the measure of) their impieties, and, behold, are themselves, as it were, grimacing; I will deal with mine indignation,[1368] mine eye shall not spare, neither will I pity; they shall cry out unto mine ears with a loud voice, and I will not hear them, nay, I will not pity. And He cried into mine ears with a loud voice, saying, The vengeance of this city is at hand; and each one had vessels of extermination in his hand. And, behold, six men were coming toward the way of the high gate which was looking toward the north, and each one’s double-axe of dispersion was in his hand: and one man in the midst of them, clothed with a garment reaching to the feet,[1369] and a girdle of sapphire about his loins: and they entered, and took their stand close to the brazen altar. And the glory of the God of Israel, which was over the house, in the open court of it,[1370] ascended from the cherubim: and the Lord called the man who was clothed with the garment reaching to the feet, who had upon his loins the girdle; and said unto him,Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and write the sign Tau[1371] on the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over all the enormities which are done in their midst. And while these things were doing, He said unto an hearer,[1372] Go ye after him into the city, and cut short; and spare not with your eyes, and pity not elder or youth or virgin; and little ones and women slay ye all, that they may be thoroughly wiped away; but all upon whom is the sign Tau approach ye not; and begin with my saints.”[1373] Now the mystery of this “sign” was in various ways predicted; (a “sign”) in which the foundation of life was forelaid for mankind; (a “sign”) in which the Jews were not to believe: just as Moses beforetime kept on announcing in Exodus,[1374] saying, “Ye shall be ejected from the land into which ye shall enter; and in those nations ye shall not be able to rest: and there shall be instability of the print[1375] of thy foot: and God shall give thee a wearying heart, and a pining soul, and failing eyes, that they see not: and thy life shall hang on the tree[1376] before thine eyes; and thou shalt not trust thy life.”
And so, since prophecy has been fulfilled through His advent—that is, through the nativity, which we have above commemorated, and the passion, which we have evidently explained—that is the reason withal why Daniel said, “Vision and prophet were sealed;” because Christ is the “signet” of all prophets, fulfilling all that had in days bygone been announced concerning Him: for, since His advent and personal passion, there is no longer “vision” or “prophet;” whence most emphatically he says that His advent “seals vision and prophecy.” And thus, by showing “the number of the years, and the time of the lxii and an half fulfilled hebdomads,” we have proved that at that specified time Christ came, that is, was born; and, (by showing the time) of the “seven and an half hebdomads,” which are subdivided so as to be cut off from the former hebdomads, within which times we have shown Christ to have suffered, and by the consequent conclusion of the “lxx hebdomads,” and the extermination of the city, (we have proved) that “sacrifice and unction” thenceforth cease.
Sufficient it is thus far, on these points, to have meantime traced the course of the ordained path of Christ, by which He is proved to be such as He used to be announced, even on the ground of that agreement of Scriptures, which has enabled us to speak out, in opposition to the Jews, on the ground[1377] of the prejudgment of the major part. For let them not question or deny the writings we produce; that the fact also that things which were foretold as destined to happen after Christ are being recognised as fulfilled may make it impossible for them to deny (these writings) to be on a par with divine Scriptures. Else, unless He were come after whom the things which were wont to be announced had to be accomplished, would such as have been completed be proved?[1378]
Look at the universal nations thenceforth emerging from the vortex of human error to the Lord God the Creator and His Christ; and if you dare to deny that this was prophesied, forthwith occurs to you the promise of the Father in the Psalms, which says, “My Son art Thou; to-day have I begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I will give Thee Gentiles as Thine heritage, and as Thy possession the bounds of the earth.”[1379] For you will not be able to affirm that “son” to be David rather than Christ; or the “bounds of the earth” to have been promised rather to David, who reigned within the single (country of) Judea, than to Christ, who has already taken captive the whole orb with the faith of His gospel; as He says through Isaiah: “Behold, I have given Thee for a covenant[1380] of my family, for a light of Gentiles, that Thou mayst open the eyes of the blind”—of course, such as err—“to outloose from bonds the bound”—that is, to free them from sins—“and from the house of prison”—that is, of death—“such as sit in darkness”[1381]—of ignorance, to wit. And if these blessings accrue through Christ, they will not have been prophesied of another than Him through whom we consider them to have been accomplished.[1382]
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