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Part Fourth
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[1615] See Rev. viii. 3, 4.
[1616] Here ensues a confused medley of all the cherubic figures of Moses, Ezekiel, and St. John.
[1617] i.e., by the four evangelists.
[1618] The cherubim, (or, “seraphim” rather,) of Isa. vi. have each six wings. Ezekiel mentions four cherubim, or “living creatures.” St. John likewise mentions four “living creatures.” Our author, combining the passages, and thrusting them into the subject of the Mosaic cherubim, multiplies the six (wings) by the four (cherubs), and so attains his end—the desired number “twenty-four”—to represent the books of the Old Testament, which (by combining certain books) may be reckoned to be twenty-four in number.
[1619] These wings.
[1620] There is again some great confusion in the text. The elders could not “stand enthroned:” nor do they stand “over,” but “around” God’s throne; so that the “insuper solio” could not apply to that.
[1621] Mundi.
[1622] Virtute.
[1623] Honestas.
[1624] Or, “records:” “monumenta,” i.e., the written word, according to the canon.
Book V.—General Reply to Sundry of Marcion’s Heresies.
[1625] I make no apology for the ruggedness of the versification and the obscurity of the sense in this book, further than to say that the state of the Latin text is such as to render it almost impossible to find any sense at all in many places, while the grammar and metre are not reducible to any known laws. It is about the hardest and most uninteresting book of the five.
[1626] Or, “consecrated by seers and patriarchs.”
[1627] i.e., all the number of Thy disciples.
[1628] Tempora lustri, i.e., apparently the times during which these “elders” (i.e., the bishops, of whom a list is given at the end of book iii.) held office. “Lustrum” is used of other periods than it strictly implies, and this seems to give some sense to this difficult passage.
[1629] i.e., Marcion.
[1630] i.e., excommunicated.
[1631] Complexu vario.
[1632] Ancipiti quamquam cum crimine. The last word seems almost ="discrimine;” just as our author uses “cerno” ="discerno.”
[1633] Mundo.
[1634] Cf. John i. 11, and see the Greek.
[1635] Whether this be the sense I know not. The passage is a mass of confusion.
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