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.12.Some of them, moreover  [when they predicted that] as a weak andinglorious man, and as one who knew what it was to bear infirmity, andsitting upon the foal of an ass, He should come to Jerusalem; and that Heshould give His back to stripes, and His cheeks to palms [which struckHim]; and that He should be led as a sheep to the slaughter; and that Heshould have vinegar and gall given Him to drink; and that He should beforsaken by His friends and those nearest to Him; and that He shouldstretch forth His hands the whole day long; and that He should be mockedand maligned by those who looked upon Him; and that His garmentsshould be parted, and lots cast upon His raiment; and that He should be1018brought down to the dust of death, with all [the other] things of a likenature  prophesied His coming in the character of a man as He enteredJerusalem, in which by His passion and crucifixion He endured all thethings which have been mentioned.Others, again, when they said,  Theholy Lord remembered His own dead ones who slept in the dust, and camedown to them to raise them up, that He might save them, furnished uswith the reason on account of which He suffered all these things.Those,moreover, who said,  In that day, saith the Lord, the sun shall go down atnoon, and there shall be darkness over the earth in the clear day; and I willturn your feast days into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation,plainly announced that obscuration of the sun which at the time of Hiscrucifixion took place from the sixth hour onwards, and that after thisevent, those days which were their festivals according to the law, and theirsongs, should be changed into grief and lamentation when they werehanded over to the Gentiles.Jeremiah, too, makes this point still clearer,when he thus speaks concerning Jerusalem:  She that hath born [seven]languisheth; her soul hath become weary; her sun hath gone down while itwas yet noon; she hath been confounded, and suffered reproach: theremainder of them will I give to the sword in the sight of their enemies.13.Those of them, again, who spoke of His having slumbered and takensleep, and of His having risen again because the Lord sustained Him, andwho enjoined the principalities of heaven to set open the everlasting doors,that the King of glory might go in, proclaimed beforehand His resurrectionfrom the dead through the Father s power, and His reception into heaven.And when they expressed themselves thus,  His going forth is from theheight of heaven, and His returning even to the highest heaven; and there isno one who can hide himself from His heat, they announced that verytruth of His being taken up again to the place from which He came down,and that there is no one who can escape His righteous judgment.And thosewho said,  The Lord hath reigned; let the people be enraged: [even] Hewho sitteth upon the cherubim; let the earth be moved, were thuspredicting partly that wrath from all nations which after His ascensioncame upon those who believed in Him, with the movement of the wholeearth against the Church; and partly the fact that, when He comes fromheaven with His mighty angels, the whole earth shall be shaken, as HeHimself declares,  There shall be a great earthquake, such as has not been1019from the beginning. And again, when one says,  Whosoever is judged, lethim stand opposite; and whosoever is justified, let him draw near to theservant of God; and,  Woe unto you, for ye shall wax old as doth agarment, and the moth shall eat you up; and,  All flesh shall be humbled,and the Lord alone shall be exalted in the highest,  it is thus indicatedthat, after His passion and ascension, God shall cast down under His feetall who were opposed to Him, and He shall be exalted above all, and thereshall be no one who can be justified or compared to Him.14.And those of them who declare that God would make a new covenantwith men, not such as that which He made with the fathers at MountHoreb, and would give to men a new heart and a new spirit; and again, And remember ye not the things of old: behold, I make new things whichshall now arise, and ye shall know it; and I will make a way in the desert,and rivers in a dry land, to give drink to my chosen people, my peoplewhom I have acquired, that they may show forth my praise,  plainlyannounced that liberty which distinguishes the new covenant, and the newwine which is put into new bottles, [that is], the faith which is in Christ,by which He has proclaimed the way of righteousness sprung up in thedesert, and the streams of the Holy Spirit in a dry land, to give water tothe elect people of God, whom He has acquired, that they might showforth His praise, but not that they might blaspheme Him who made thesethings, that is, God.15.And all those other points which I have shown the prophets to haveuttered by means of so long a series of Scriptures, he who is truly spiritualwill interpret by pointing out, in regard to every one of the things whichhave been spoken, to what special point in the dispensation of the Lord isreferred, and [by thus exhibiting] the entire system of the work of the Sonof God, knowing always the same God, and always acknowledging thesame Word of God, although He has [but] now been manifested to us;acknowledging also at all times the same Spirit of God, although He hasbeen poured out upon us after a new fashion in these last times, [knowingthat He descends] even from the creation of the world to its end upon thehuman race simply as such, from whom those who believe God and followHis word receive that salvation which flows from Him.Those, on theother hand, who depart from Him, and despise His precepts, and by theirdeeds bring dishonor on Him who made them, and by their opinions1020blaspheme Him who nourishes them, heap up against themselves mostrighteous judgment.He therefore (i.e., the spiritual man) sifts and triesthem all, but he himself is tried by no man: he neither blasphemes hisFather, nor sets aside His dispensations, nor inveighs against the fathers,nor dishonors the prophets, by maintaining that they were [sent] fromanother God [than he worships], or again, that their prophecies werederived from different sources.CHAPTER 34PROOF AGAINST THE MARCIONITES, THAT THE PROPHETSREFERRED IN ALL THEIR PREDICTIONS TO OUR CHRIST1 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]