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Anti-Marcion
And now, on the subject of a loan, when He asks, “And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?”[4093] compare with this the following words of Ezekiel, in which He says of the before-mentioned just man, “He hath not given his money upon usury, nor will he take any increase”[4094]—meaning the redundance of interest,[4095] which is usury. The first step was to eradicate the fruit of the money lent,[4096] the more easily to accustom a man to the loss, should it happen, of the money itself, the interest of which he had learnt to lose. Now this, we affirm, was the function of the law as preparatory to the gospel. It was engaged in forming the faith of such as would learn,[4097] by gradual stages, for the perfect light of the Christian discipline, through the best precepts of which it was capable,[4098] inculcating a benevolence which as yet expressed itself but falteringly.[4099] For in the passage of Ezekiel quoted above He says, “And thou shalt restore the pledge of the loan”[4100]—to him, certainly, who is incapable of repayment, because, as a matter of course, He would not anyhow prescribe the restoration of a pledge to one who was solvent. Much more clearly is it enjoined in Deuteronomy: “Thou shalt not sleep upon his pledge; thou shalt be sure to return to him his garment about sunset, and he shall sleep in his own garment.”[4101] Clearer still is a former passage: “Thou shalt remit every debt which thy neighbour oweth thee; and of thy brother thou shalt not require it, because it is called the release of the Lord thy God.”[4102] Now, when He commands that a debt be remitted to a man who shall be unable to pay it (for it is a still stronger argument when He forbids its being asked for from a man who is even able to repay it), what else does He teach than that we should lend to those of whom we cannot receive again, inasmuch as He has imposed so great a loss on lending? “And ye shall be the children of God.”[4103] What can be more shameless, than for him to be making us his children, who has not permitted us to make children for ourselves by forbidding marriage?[4104] How does he propose to invest his followers with a name which he has already erased? I cannot be the son of a eunuch especially when I have for my Father the same great Being whom the universe claims for its! For is not the Founder of the universe as much a Father, even of all men, as (Marcion’s) castrated deity,[4105] who is the maker of no existing thing? Even if the Creator had not united male and female, and if He had not allowed any living creature whatever to have children, I yet had this relation to Him[4106] before Paradise, before the fall, before the expulsion, before the two became one.[4107] I became His son a second time,[4108] as soon as He fashioned me[4109] with His hands, and gave me motion with His inbreathing. Now again He names me His son, not begetting me into natural life, but into spiritual life.[4110] “Because,” says He, “He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.”[4111] Well done,[4112] Marcion! how cleverly have you withdrawn from Him the showers and the sunshine, that He might not seem to be a Creator! But who is this kind being[4113] which hitherto has not been even known? How can he be kind who had previously shown no evidences of such a kindness as this, which consists of the loan to us of sunshine and rain?—who is not destined to receive from the human race (the homage due to that) Creator,—who, up to this very moment, in return for His vast liberality in the gift of the elements, bears with men while they offer to idols, more readily than Himself, the due returns of His graciousness. But God is truly kind even in spiritual blessings. “The utterances[4114] of the Lord are sweeter than honey and honeycombs.”[4115] He then has taunted[4116] men as ungrateful who deserved to have their gratitude—even He, whose sunshine and rain even you, O Marcion, have enjoyed, but without gratitude! Your god, however, had no right to complain of man’s ingratitude, because he had used no means to make them grateful. Compassion also does He teach: “Be ye merciful,” says He, “as your Father also that had mercy upon you.”[4117] This injunction will be of a piece with, “Deal thy bread to the hungry; and if he be houseless, bring him into thine house; and if thou seest the naked, cover him;”[4118] also with, “Judge the fatherless, plead with the widow.”[4119] I recognise here that ancient doctrine of Him who “prefers mercy to sacrifice.”[4120] If, however, it be now some other being which teaches mercy, on the ground of his own mercifulness, how happens it that he has been wanting in mercy to me for so vast an age? “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven; give, and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye measure withal, it shall be measured to you again.”[4121] As it seems to me, this passage announces a retribution proportioned to the merits. But from whom shall come the retribution? If only from men, in that case he teaches a merely human discipline and recompense; and in everything we shall have to obey man: if from the Creator, as the Judge and the Recompenser of merits, then He compels our submission to Him, in whose hands[4122] He has placed a retribution which will be acceptable or terrible according as every man shall have judged or condemned, acquitted or dealt with,[4123] his neighbour; if from (Marcion’s god) himself, he will then exercise a judicial function which Marcion denies. Let the Marcionites therefore make their choice: Will it not be just the same inconsistency to desert the prescription of their master, as to have Christ teaching in the interest of men or of the Creator? But “a blind man will lead a blind man into the ditch.”[4124] Some persons believe Marcion. But “the disciple is not above his master.”[4125] Apelles ought to have remembered this—a corrector of Marcion, although his disciple.[4126] The heretic ought to take the beam out of his own eye, and then he may convict[4127] the Christian, should he suspect a mote to be in his eye. Just as a good tree cannot produce evil fruit, so neither can truth generate heresy; and as a corrupt tree cannot yield good fruit, so heresy will not produce truth. Thus, Marcion brought nothing good out of Cerdon’s evil treasure; nor Apelles out of Marcion’s.[4128] For in applying to these heretics the figurative words which Christ used of men in general, we shall make a much more suitable interpretation of them than if we were to deduce out of them two gods, according to Marcion’s grievous exposition.[4129] I think that I have the best reason possible for insisting still upon the position which I have all along occupied, that in no passage to be anywhere found has another God been revealed by Christ. I wonder that in this place alone Marcion’s hands should have felt benumbed in their adulterating labour.[4130] But even robbers have their qualms now and then. There is no wrong-doing without fear, because there is none without a guilty conscience. So long, then, were the Jews cognisant of no other god but Him, beside whom they knew none else; nor did they call upon any other than Him whom alone they knew. This being the case, who will He clearly be[4131] that said, “Why callest thou me Lord, Lord?”[4132] Will it be he who had as yet never been called on, because never yet revealed;[4133] or He who was ever regarded as the Lord, because known from the beginning—even the God of the Jews? Who, again, could possibly have added, “and do not the things which I say?” Could it have been he who was only then doing his best[4134] to teach them? Or He who from the beginning had addressed to them His messages[4135] both by the law and the prophets? He could then upbraid them with disobedience, even if He had no ground at any time else for His reproof. The fact is, that He who was then imputing to them their ancient obstinacy was none other than He who, before the coming of Christ, had addressed to them these words, “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart standeth far off from me.”[4136] Otherwise, how absurd it were that a new god, a new Christ, the revealer of a new and so grand a religion should denounce as obstinate and disobedient those whom he had never had it in his power to make trial of!
Likewise, when extolling the centurion’s faith, how incredible a thing it is, that He should confess that He had “found so great a faith not even in Israel,”[4137] to whom Israel’s faith was in no way interesting![4138] But not from the fact (here stated by Christ)[4139] could it have been of any interest to Him to approve and compare what was hitherto crude, nay, I might say, hitherto naught. Why, however, might He not have used the example of faith in another[4140] god? Because, if He had done so, He would have said that no such faith had ever had existence in Israel; but as the case stands,[4141] He intimates that He ought to have found so great a faith in Israel, inasmuch as He had indeed come for the purpose of finding it, being in truth the God and Christ of Israel, and had now stigmatized[4142] it, only as one who would enforce and uphold it. If, indeed, He had been its antagonist,[4143] He would have preferred finding it to be such faith,[4144] having come to weaken and destroy it rather than to approve of it. He raised also the widow’s son from death.[4145] This was not a strange miracle.[4146] The Creator’s prophets had wrought such; then why not His Son much rather? Now, so evidently had the Lord Christ introduced no other god for the working of so momentous a miracle as this, that all who were present gave glory to the Creator, saying: “A great prophet is risen up among us, and God hath visited His people.”[4147] What God? He, of course, whose people they were, and from whom had come their prophets. But if they glorified the Creator, and Christ (on hearing them, and knowing their meaning) refrained from correcting them even in their very act of invoking[4148] the Creator in that vast manifestation of His glory in this raising of the dead, undoubtedly He either announced no other God but Him, whom He thus permitted to be honoured in His own beneficent acts and miracles, or else how happens it that He quietly permitted these persons to remain so long in their error, especially as He came for the very purpose to cure them of their error? But John is offended[4149] when he hears of the miracles of Christ, as of an alien god.[4150] Well, I on my side[4151] will first explain the reason of his offence, that I may the more easily explode the scandal[4152] of our heretic. Now, that the very Lord Himself of all might, the Word and Spirit of the Father,[4153] was operating and preaching on earth, it was necessary that the portion of the Holy Spirit which, in the form of the prophetic gift,[4154] had been through John preparing the ways of the Lord, should now depart from John,[4155] and return back again of course to the Lord, as to its all-embracing original.[4156] Therefore John, being now an ordinary person, and only one of the many,[4157] was offended indeed as a man, but not because he expected or thought of another Christ as teaching or doing nothing new, for he was not even expecting such a one.[4158] Nobody will entertain doubts about any one whom (since he knows him not to exist) he has no expectation or thought of. Now John was quite sure that there was no other God but the Creator, even as a Jew, especially as a prophet.[4159] Whatever doubt he felt was evidently rather[4160] entertained about Him[4161] whom he knew indeed to exist but knew not whether He were the very Christ. With this fear, therefore, even John asks the question, “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?”[4162]—simply inquiring whether He was come as He whom he was looking for. “Art thou He that should come?” i.e. Art thou the coming One? “or look we for another?” i.e. Is He whom we are expecting some other than Thou, if Thou art not He whom we expect to come? For he was supposing,[4163] as all men then thought, from the similarity of the miraculous evidences,[4164] that a prophet might possibly have been meanwhile sent, from whom the Lord Himself, whose coming was then expected, was different, and to whom He was superior.[4165] And there lay John’s difficulty.[4166] He was in doubt whether He was actually come whom all men were looking for; whom, moreover, they ought to have recognised by His predicted works, even as the Lord sent word to John, that it was by means of these very works that He was to be recognised.[4167] Now, inasmuch as these predictions evidently related to the Creator’s Christ—as we have proved in the examination of each of them—it was perverse enough, if he gave himselfout to be not the Christ of the Creator, and rested the proof of his statement on those very evidences whereby he was urging his claims to be received as the Creator’s Christ. Far greater still is his perverseness when, not being the Christ of John,[4168] he yet bestows on John his testimony, affirming him to be a prophet, nay more, his messenger,[4169] applying to him the Scripture, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.”[4170] He graciously[4171] adduced the prophecy in the superior sense of the alternative mentioned by the perplexed John, in order that, by affirming that His own precursor was already come in the person of John, He might quench the doubt[4172] which lurked in his question: “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?” Now that the forerunner had fulfilled his mission, and the way of the Lord was prepared, He ought now to be acknowledged as that (Christ) for whom the forerunner had made ready the way. That forerunner was indeed “greater than all of women born;”[4173] but for all that, He who was least in the kingdom of God[4174] was not subject to him;[4175] as if the kingdom in which the least person was greater than John belonged to one God, while John, who was greater than all of women born, belonged himself to another God. For whether He speaks of any “least person” by reason of his humble position, or of Himself, as being thought to be less than John—since all were running into the wilderness after John rather than after Christ (“What went ye out into the wilderness to see?”[4176])—the Creator has equal right[4177] to claim as His own both John, greater than any born of women, and Christ, or every “least person in the kingdom of heaven,” who was destined to be greater than John in that kingdom, although equally pertaining to the Creator, and who would be so much greater than the prophet,[4178] because he would not have been offended at Christ, an infirmity which then lessened the greatness of John. We have already spoken of the forgiveness[4179] of sins. The behaviour of “the woman which was a sinner,” when she covered the Lord’s feet with her kisses, bathed them with her tears, wiped them with the hairs of her head, anointed them with ointment,[4180] produced an evidence that what she handled was not an empty phantom,[4181] but a really solid body, and that her repentance as a sinner deserved forgiveness according to the mind of the Creator, who is accustomed to prefer mercy to sacrifice.[4182] But even if the stimulus of her repentance proceeded from her faith, she heard her justification by faith through her repentance pronounced in the words, “Thy faith hath saved thee,” by Him who had declared by Habakkuk, “The just shall live by his faith.”[4183]
The fact that certain rich women clave to Christ, “which ministered unto Him of their substance,” amongst whom was the wife of the king’s steward, is a subject of prophecy. By Isaiah the Lord called these wealthy ladies—“Rise up, ye women that are at ease, and hear my voice”[4184]—that He might prove[4185] them first as disciples, and then as assistants and helpers: “Daughters, hear my words in hope; this day of the year cherish the memory of, in labour with hope.” For it was “in labour” that they followed Him, and “with hope” did they minister to Him. On the subject of parables, let it suffice that it has been once for all shown that this kind of language[4186] was with equal distinctness promised by the Creator. But there is that direct mode of His speaking[4187] to the people—“Ye shall hear with the ear, but ye shall not understand”[4188]—which now claims notice as having furnished to Christ that frequent form of His earnest instruction: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[4189] Not as if Christ, actuated with a diverse spirit, permitted a hearing which the Creator had refused; but because the exhortation followed the threatening. First came, “Ye shall hear with the ear, but shall not understand;” then followed, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For they wilfully refused to hear, although they had ears. He, however, was teaching them that it was the ears of the heart which were necessary; and with these the Creator had said that they would not hear. Therefore it is that He adds by His Christ, “Take heed how ye hear,”[4190] and hear not,—meaning, of course, with the hearing of the heart, not of the ear. If you only attach a proper sense to the Creator’s admonition,[4191] suitable to the meaning of Him who was rousing the people to hear by the words, “Take heed how ye hear,” it amounted to a menace to such as would not hear. In fact,[4192] that most merciful god of yours, who judges not, neither is angry, is minatory. This is proved even by the sentence which immediately follows: “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.”[4193] What shall be given? The increase of faith, or understanding, or even salvation. What shall be taken away? That, of course, which shall be given. By whom shall the gift and the deprivation be made? If by the Creator it be taken away, by Him also shall it be given. If by Marcion’s god it be given, by Marcion’s god also will it be taken away. Now, for whatever reason He threatens the “deprivation,” it will not be the work of a god who knows not how to threaten, because incapable of anger. I am, moreover, astonished when he says that “a candle is not usually hidden,”[4194] who had hidden himself—a greater and more needful light—during so long a time; and when he promises that “everything shall be brought out of its secrecy and made manifest,”[4195] who hitherto has kept his god in obscurity, waiting (I suppose) until Marcion be born. We now come to the most strenuously-plied argument of all those who call in question the Lord’s nativity. They say that He testifies Himself to His not having been born, when He asks, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?”[4196] In this manner heretics either wrest plain and simple words to any sense they choose by their conjectures, or else they violently resolve by a literal interpretation words which imply a conditional sense and are incapable of a simple solution,[4197] as in this passage. We, for our part, say in reply, first, that it could not possibly have been told Him that His mother and His brethren stood without, desiring to see Him, if He had had no mother and no brethren. They must have been known to him who announced them, either some time previously, or then at that very time, when they desired to see Him, or sent Him their message. To this our first position this answer is usually given by the other side. But suppose they sent Him the message for the purpose of tempting Him? Well, but the Scripture does not say so; and inasmuch as it is usual for it to indicate what is done in the way of temptation (“Behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him;”[4198] again, when inquiring about tribute, the Pharisees came to Him, tempting Him[4199]), so, when it makes no mention of temptation, it does not admit the interpretation of temptation. However, although I do not allow this sense, I may as well ask, by way of a superfluous refutation, for the reasons of the alleged temptation, To what purpose could they have tempted Him by naming His mother and His brethren? If it was to ascertain whether He had been born or not—when was a question raised on this point, which they must resolve by tempting Him in this way? Who could doubt His having been born, when they[4200] saw Him before them a veritable man?—whom they had heard call Himself “Son of man?”—of whom they doubted whether He were God or Son of God, from seeing Him, as they did, in the perfect garb of human quality?—supposing Him rather to be a prophet, a great one indeed,[4201] but still one who had been born as man? Even if it had been necessary that He should thus be tried in the investigation of His birth, surely any other proof would have better answered the trial than that to be obtained from mentioning those relatives which it was quite possible for Him, in spite of His true nativity, not at that moment to have had. For tell me now, does a mother live on contemporaneously[4202] with her sons in every case? Have all sons brothers born for them?[4203] May a man rather not have fathers and sisters (living), or even no relatives at all? But there is historical proof[4204] that at this very time[4205] a census had been taken in Judæa by Sentius Saturninus,[4206] which might have satisfied their inquiry respecting the family and descent of Christ. Such a method of testing the point had therefore no consistency whatever in it and they “who were standing without” were really “His mother and His brethren.” It remains for us to examine His meaning when He resorts to non-literal[4207] words, saying “Who is my mother or my brethren?” It seems as if His language amounted to a denial of His family and His birth; but it arose actually from the absolute nature of the case, and the conditional sense in which His words were to be explained.[4208] He was justly indignant, that persons so very near to Him “stood without,” while strangers were within hanging on His words, especially as they wanted to call Him away from the solemn work He had in hand. He did not so much deny as disavow[4209] them. And therefore, when to the previous question, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?”[4210] He added the answer “None but they who hear my words and do them,” He transferred the names of blood-relationship to others, whom He judged to be more closely related to Him by reason of their faith. Now no one transfers a thing except from him who possesses that which is transferred. If, therefore, He made them “His mother and His brethren” who were not so, how could He deny them these relationships who really had them? Surely only on the condition of their deserts, and not by any disavowal of His near relatives; teaching them by His own actual example,[4211] that “whosoever preferred father or mother or brethren to the Word of God, was not a disciple worthy of Him.”[4212] Besides,[4213] His admission of His mother and His brethren was the more express, from the fact of His unwillingness to acknowledge them. That He adopted others only confirmed those in their relationship to Him whom He refused because of their offence, and for whom He substituted the others, not as being truer relatives, but worthier ones. Finally, it was no great matter if He did prefer to kindred (that) faith which it[4214] did not possess.[4215]
But “what manner of man is this? for He commandeth even the winds and water!”[4216] Of course He is the new master and proprietor of the elements, now that the Creator is deposed, and excluded from their possession! Nothing of the kind. But the elements own[4217] their own Maker, just as they had been accustomed to obey His servants also. Examine well the Exodus, Marcion; look at the rod of Moses, as it waves His command to the Red Sea, ampler than all the lakes of Judæa. How the sea yawns from its very depths, then fixes itself in two solidified masses, and so, out of the interval between them,[4218] makes a way for the people to pass dry-shod across; again does the same rod vibrate, the sea returns in its strength, and in the concourse of its waters the chivalry of Egypt is engulphed! To that consummation the very winds subserved! Read, too, how that the Jordan was as a sword, to hinder the emigrant nation in their passage across its stream; how that its waters from above stood still, and its current below wholly ceased to run at the bidding of Joshua,[4219] when his priests began to pass over![4220] What will you say to this? If it be your Christ that is meant above, he will not be more potent than the servants of the Creator. But I should have been content with the examples I have adduced without addition,[4221] if a prediction of His present passage on the sea had not preceded Christ’s coming. As psalm is, in fact, accomplished by this[4222] crossing over the lake. “The Lord,” says the psalmist, “is upon many waters.”[4223] When He disperses its waves, Habakkuk’s words are fulfilled, where he says, “Scattering the waters in His passage.”[4224] When at His rebuke the sea is calmed, Nahum is also verified: He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry,”[4225] including the winds indeed, whereby it was disquieted. With what evidence would you have my Christ vindicated? Shall it come from the examples, or from the prophecies, of the Creator? You suppose that He is predicted as a military and armed warrior,[4226] instead of one who in a figurative and allegorical sense was to wage a spiritual warfare against spiritual enemies, in spiritual campaigns, and with spiritual weapons: come now, when in one man alone you discover a multitude of demons calling itself Legion,[4227] of course comprised of spirits, you should learn that Christ also must be understood to be an exterminator of spiritual foes, who wields spiritual arms and fights in spiritual strife; and that it was none other than He,[4228] who now had to contend with even a legion of demons. Therefore it is of such a war as this that the Psalm may evidently have spoken: “The Lord is strong, The Lord is mighty in battle.”[4229] For with the last enemy death did He fight, and through the trophy of the cross He triumphed. Now of what God did the Legion testify that Jesus was the Son?[4230] No doubt, of that God whose torments and abyss they knew and dreaded. It seems impossible for them to have remained up to this time in ignorance of what the power of the recent and unknown god was working in the world, because it is very unlikely that the Creator was ignorant thereof. For if He had been at any time ignorant that there was another god above Himself, He had by this time at all events discovered that there was one at work[4231] below His heaven. Now, what their Lord had discovered had by this time become notorious to His entire family within the same world and the same circuit of heaven, in which the strange deity dwelt and acted.[4232] As therefore both the Creator and His creatures[4233] must have had knowledge of him, if he had been in existence, so, inasmuch as he had no existence, the demons really knew none other than the Christ of their own God. They do not ask of the strange god, what they recollected they must beg of the Creator—not to be plunged into the Creator’s abyss. They at last had their request granted. On what ground? Because they had lied? Because they had proclaimed Him to be the Son of a ruthless God? And what sort of god will that be who helped the lying, and upheld his detractors? However, no need of this thought, for,[4234] inasmuch as they had not lied, inasmuch as they had acknowledged that the God of the abyss was also their God, so did He actually Himself affirm that He was the same whom these demons acknowledged—Jesus, the Judge and Son of the avenging God. Now, behold an inkling[4235] of the Creator’s failings[4236] and infirmities in Christ; for I on my side[4237] mean to impute to Him ignorance. Allow me some indulgence in my effort against the heretic. Jesus is touched by the woman who had an issue of blood,[4238] He knew not by whom. “Who touched me?” He asks, when His disciples alleged an excuse. He even persists in His assertion of ignorance: “Somebody hath touched me,” He says, and advances some proof: “For I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” What says our heretic? Could Christ have known the person? And why did He speak as if He were ignorant? Why? Surely it was to challenge her faith, and to try her fear. Precisely as He had once questioned Adam, as if in ignorance: Adam, where art thou?”[4239] Thus you have both the Creator excused in the same way as Christ, and Christ acting similarly to[4240] the Creator. But in this case He acted as an adversary of the law; and therefore, as the law forbids contact with a woman with an issue,[4241] He desired not only that this woman should touch Him, but that He should heal her.[4242] Here, then, is a God who is not merciful by nature, but in hostility! Yet, if we find that such was the merit of this woman’s faith, that He said unto her, Thy faith hath saved thee,”[4243] what are you, that you should detect an hostility to the law in that act, which the Lord Himself shows us to have been done as a reward of faith? But will you have it that this faith of the woman consisted in the contempt which she had acquired for the law? Who can suppose, that a woman who had been. hitherto unconscious of any God, uninitiated as yet in any new law, should violently infringe that law by which she was up to this time bound? On what faith, indeed, was such an infringement hazarded? In what God believing? Whom despising? The Creator? Her touch at least was an act of faith. And if of faith in the Creator, how could she have violated His law,[4244] when she was ignorant of any other God? Whatever her infringement of the law amounted to, it proceeded from and was proportionate to her faith in the Creator. But how can these two things be compatible? That she violated the law, and violated it in faith, which ought to have restrained her from such violation? I will tell you how her faith was this above all:[4245] it made her believe that her God preferred mercy even to sacrifice; she was certain that her God was working in Christ; she touched Him, therefore, nor as a holy man simply, nor as a prophet, whom she knew to be capable of contamination by reason of his human nature, but as very God, whom she assumed to be beyond all possibility of pollution by any uncleanness.[4246] She therefore, not without reason,[4247] interpreted for herself the law, as meaning that such things as are susceptible of defilement become defiled, but not so God, whom she knew for certain to be in Christ. But she recollected this also, that what came under the prohibition of the law[4248] was that ordinary and usual issue of blood which proceeds from natural functions every month, and in childbirth, not that which was the result of disordered health. Her case, however, was one of long abounding[4249] ill health, for which she knew that the succour of God’s mercy was needed, and not the natural relief of time. And thus she may evidently be regarded as having discerned[4250] the law, instead of breaking it. This will prove to be the faith which was to confer intelligence likewise. “If ye will not believe,” says (the prophet), “ye shall not understand.”[4251] When Christ approved of the faith of this woman, which simply rested in the Creator, He declared by His answer to her,[4252] that He was Himself the divine object of the faith of which He approved. Nor can I overlook the fact that His garment, by being touched, demonstrated also the truth of His body; for of course”[4253] it was a body, and not a phantom, which the garment clothed.[4254] This indeed is not our point now; but the remark has a natural bearing on the question we are discussing. For if it were not a veritable body, but only a fantastic one, it could not for certain have received contamination, as being an unsubstantial thing.[4255] He therefore, who, by reason of this vacuity of his substance, was incapable of contamination, how could he possibly have desired this touch?[4256] As an adversary of the law, his conduct was deceitful, for he was not susceptible of a real pollution.
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