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.But if athought of this kind should then suggest itself to you, to say, What thendid the Lord bring to us by His advent?  know ye that He brought all[possible] novelty, by bringing Himself who had been announced.For thisvery thing was proclaimed beforehand, that a novelty should come torenew and quicken mankind.For the advent of the King is previouslyannounced by those servants who are sent [before Him], in order to thepreparation and equipment of those men who are to entertain their Lord.But when the King has actually come, and those who are His subjects havebeen filled with that joy which was proclaimed beforehand, and haveattained to that liberty which He bestows, and share in the sight of Him,and have listened to His words, and have enjoyed the gifts which Heconfers, the question will not then be asked by any that are possessed ofsense what new thing the King has brought beyond [that proclaimed by]those who announced His coming.For He has brought Himself, and hasbestowed on men those good things which were announced beforehand,which things the angels desired to look into.10212.But the servants would then have been proved false, and not sent by theLord, if Christ on His advent, by being found exactly such as He waspreviously announced, had not fulfilled their words.Wherefore He said, Think not that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets; I camenot to destroy, but to fulfill.For verily I say unto you, Until heaven andearth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law and theprophets till all come to pass. For by His advent He Himself fulfilled allthings, and does still fulfill in the Church the new covenant foretold by thelaw, onwards to the consummation [of all things].To this effect also Paul,His apostle, says in the Epistle to the Romans,  But now, without thelaw, has the righteousness of God been manifested, being witnessed by thelaw and the prophets; for the just shall live by faith. But this fact, thatthe just shall live by faith, had been previously announced by theprophets.3.But whence could the prophets have had power to predict the advent ofthe King, and to preach beforehand that liberty which was bestowed byHim, and previously to announce all things which were done by Christ,His words, His works, and His sufferings, and to predict the newcovenant, if they had received prophetical inspiration from another God[than He who is revealed in the Gospel], they being ignorant, as ye allege,of the ineffable Father, of His kingdom, and His dispensations, which theSon of God fulfilled when He came upon earth in these last times? Neitherare ye in a position to say that these things came to pass by a certain kindof chance, as if they were spoken by the prophets in regard to some otherperson, while like events happened to the Lord.For all the prophetsprophesied these same things, but they never came to pass in the case ofany one of the ancients.For if these things had happened to any manamong them of old time, those [prophets] who lived subsequently wouldcertainly not have prophesied that these events should come to pass in thelast times.Moreover, there is in fact none among the fathers, nor theprophets, nor the ancient kings, in whose case any one of these thingsproperly and specifically took place.For all indeed prophesied as to thesufferings of Christ, but they themselves were far from enduring sufferingssimilar to what was predicted.And the points connected with the passionof the Lord, which were foretold, were realized in no other case.Forneither did it happen at the death of any man among the ancients that the1022sun set at mid-day, nor was the veil of the temple rent, nor did the earthquake, nor were the rocks rent, nor did the dead rise up, nor was any oneof these men [of old] raised up on the third day, nor received into heaven,nor at his assumption were the heavens opened, nor did the nations believein the name of any other; nor did any from among them, having been deadand rising again, lay open the new covenant of liberty.Therefore theprophets spake not of any one else but of the Lord, in whom all theseaforesaid tokens concurred.4.If any one, however, advocating the cause of the Jews, do maintain thatthis new covenant consisted in the rearing of that temple which was builtunder Zerubbabel after the emigration to Babylon, and in the departure ofthe people from thence after the lapse of seventy years, let him know thatthe temple constructed of stones was indeed then rebuilt (for as yet thatlaw was observed which had been made upon tables of stone), yet no newcovenant was given, but they used the Mosaic law until the coming of theLord; but from the Lord s advent, the new covenant which brings backpeace, and the law which gives life, has gone forth over the whole earth, asthe prophets said:  For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word ofthe Lord from Jerusalem; and He shall rebuke many people; and they shallbreak down their swords into ploughshares, and their spears intopruning-hooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight. If therefore anotherlaw and word, going forth from Jerusalem, brought in such a [reign of]peace among the Gentiles which received it (the word), and convinced,through them, many a nation of its folly, then [only] it appears that theprophets spake of some other person.But if the law of liberty, that is, theword of God, preached by the apostles (who went forth from Jerusalem)throughout all the earth, caused such a change in the state of things, thatthese [nations] did form the swords and war-lances into ploughshares, andchanged them into pruning-hooks for reaping the corn, [that is], intoinstruments used for peaceful purposes, and that they are nowunaccustomed to fighting, but when smitten, offer also the other cheek,then the prophets have not spoken these things of any other person, butof Him who effected them.This person is our Lord, and in Him is thatdeclaration borne out; since it is He Himself who has made the plough, andintroduced the pruning-hook, that is, the first semination of man, whichwas the creation exhibited in Adam, and the gathering in of the produce in1023the last times by the Word; and, for this reason, since He joined thebeginning to the end, and is the Lord of both, He has finally displayed theplough, in that the wood has been joined on to the iron, and has thuscleansed His land because the Word having been firmly united to flesh, andin its mechanism fixed with pins, has reclaimed the savage earth.In thebeginning, He figured forth the pruning-hook by means of Abel, pointingout that there should be a gathering in of a righteous race of men [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]