7 Or, perhaps, " has not yet tasted."
8 vEternitatis candidatus. Comp. ad Ux. 1. i. c.~vii., and note 3 there.
9 See above.
'oi.e., nephew. See Gen. xi. 31, xii. 5.
" See Gen. xix. 1-29; and comp. 2 Pet. ii. 6-q.
'-See Gen. xii.-xv. compared with xvii. and Kom. iv.
'3 Acceperat. So Tertullian renders, as it appears to me, the eAajSe of St. Paul in Rom. iv. 11. q. v.
14 There is, if the text be genuine, some confusion here. Mel- chizedek does not.ippear to have been, in any sense, "subse- quent " to Abraham, for he probably was senior to him; and, moreover, Abraham does not appear to have been " already cir- cumcised " car7tally when Melchizedek met him. Comp. Gen, xiv. with Gen. xvii.
•5 Tertullian writes Seffora; the LXX. in loco, ^tn^topa, Ei. iv. 24-26, where the Eng. ver. says, "the Lord met hinrv" etc.; the LXX. ayye\oi Kvpi'ov.
AN ANSWER TO THE JEWS.
[chap. III.
cumcision, the people should not despise it, from seeing this example (of neglect) already exhibited conspicuously in their leader's son. For circumcision had to be given; but as " a sign, " whence Israel in the last time would have to be distinguished, when, in accordance with their deserts, they should be prohibited from entering the holy city, as we see through the words of the prophets, saying, " Your land is desert; your cities utterly burnt with fire; your country, in your sight, strangers shall eat up; and, deserted and subverted by strange peoples, the daughter of Zion shall be derelict, like a shed in a vineyard, and like a watchhouse in a cucumber-field, and as it were a city which is being stormed." ' Why so? Because the subsequent discourse of the prophet reproaches them, saying, "Sons have I begotten and upraised, but they have reprobated me;"^ and again, "And if ye shall have outstretched hands, I will avert my face from you; and if ye shall have multiplied prayers, I will not hear you: for your hands are full of blood; " ^ and again, " Woe! sinful nation; a people full of sins; wicked sons; ye have quite forsaken God, and have pro- voked unto indignation the Holy One of Israel."'' This, therefore, was God's fore- sight,— that of giving circumcision to Israel, for a sign whence they might be distinguished when the time should arrive wherein their above-mentioned deserts should prohibit their admission into Jerusalem: which circum- stance, because it was to be, used to be an- nounced; and, because we see it accomplished, is recognised by us. For, as the carnal cir- cumcision, which was temporary, was in- wrought for "a sign " in a contumacious people, so the spiritual has been given for salvation to an obedient people; while the prophet Jeremiah says, " Make a renewal for you, and sow not in thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart: " ^ and in another place he says, " Be- hold, days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will draw up, for the house of Judah and for the house of Jacob, ^ a new testament; not such as I once gave their fathers in the day wherein I led them out from the land of Egypt." 7 Whence we understand that the coming cessation of the former circumcision then given, and the coming procession of a new law (not such as He had already given to = Again an error; for these viQTis Jiretede the Others. These are found in Isa. i. 2.
5 Jer. iv. 3, 4. In Eng. ver., " Break up your fallow ground;" but comp. de Pu. c. vi. ad I'nii.
*So TertuUian. In Jer. Hid. " Israel and...Judah." 7 Jer. xxxi. 31, 32 (in LXX. Hid. xxxviii. 31, 32); comp. Heb.
the fathers), are announced: just as Isaiah foretold, saying that in the last days the mount of the Lord and the house of God were to be manifest above the tops of the mounts: " And it shall be exalted," he says, "above the hills; and there shall come over it all nations; and many shall walk, and say, Come, ascend we unto the mount of the Lord, and unto the house of the God of Jacob,'" ^ — not of Esau, the former son, but of Jacob, the second; that is, of our " people," whose " mount " is Christ, " praecised without concisors' hando,' filling every land," shown in the book of Daniel.'" In short, the coming procession of a new law out of this " house of the God of Jacob" Isaiah in the ensuing words an- nounces, saying, " For from Zion shall go out a law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, and shall judge among the na- tions,"— that is, among us, who have been called out of the nations, — " and they shall join to beat their glaives into ploughs, and their lances into sickles; and nations shall not take up glaive against nation, and they shall no more learn to fight."" Who else, therefore, are understood but we, who, fully taught by the new law, observe these prac- tices,— the old law being obliterated, the coming of whose abolition the action itself" demonstrates? For the wont of the old law was to avenge itself by the vengeance of the glaive, and to pluck out "eye for eye," and to inflict retaliatory revenge for injury.'^ But the new law's wont was to point to clemency, and to convert to tranquillity the pristine ferocity of "glaives" and "lances," and to remodel the pristine execution of "war" upon the rivals and foes of the law into the pacific actions of "ploughing" and "till- ing " the land."* Therefore, as we have shown above that the coming cessation of the old law and of the carnal circumcision was de- clared, so, too, the observance of the new law and the spiritual circumcision has shone out into the voluntary obediences '^ of peace. For "a people," he says, "whom I knew not hath served me; in obedience of the ear it hath obeyed me." '* Prophets made the an- nouncement. But what is the "people" which was ignorant of God, but ours, who in days bygone knew not God? and who, in the 9 Perhaps an allusion to Phil. iii. 1, 2.
'° See Dan. ii. 34, 35, 44, 45. See c. xiv. below.
'2 i.e.y of beating swords into ploughs, etc.
•3 Comp. Ex. xxi. 24, 25; Lev. xxiv. 17-22; Deut. xtx. 11-21; M Especially spiritually. Comp. i Cor. iii. 6-9, ix. 9, 10, and similar passages.
•5 Obsequia. See de Pa, c. iv. note i.
'^See Ps. xviii. 43. 44 (xvii. ^4, 45 in LXX.), where the Eng. ver. has the future; the LXX., lil:e Tertullian, the past. Comp. 2 Sam. (in LXX. 2 Kings) xxii. 44, 45, an''. Rom. x 14-17.
CHAP. IV.]
AN ANSWER TO THE JEWS.
hearing of the ear, gave heed to Him, but we, who, forsaking idols, have been converted to God? For Israel — who had been known to God, and who had by Him been " upraised " ' in Egypt, and was transported through the Red Sea, and who in the desert, fed forty years with manna, was wrought to the sem- blance of eternity, and not contaminated with human passions,^ or fed on this world's ^ meats, but fed on "angel's loaves " •»^t he manna — and sufficiently bound to God by His benefits — forgat his Lord and God, saying to Aaron: " Make us gods, to go before us: for that Moses, who ejected us from the land of Egypt, hath quite forsaken us; and what hath befallen him we know not." And accordingly we, who "were not the people of God" in days bygone, have been made His people, s by accepting the new law above mentioned, and the new circumcision before foretold.
CHAP. IV, — OF THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH.
It follows, accordingly, that, in so far as the abolition of carnal circumcision and of the old law is demonstrated as having been con- summated at its specific times, so also the observance of the Sabbath is demonstrated to have been temporary.
For the Jews say, that from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day, by resting on it from all His works which He made; and that thence it was, likewise, that Moses said to the People: "Remember the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it: every servile work ye shall not do therein, except what pertaineth unto life."* Whence we (Christians) under- stand that tve still more ought to observe a sabbath from all " servile work " ^ always, and not only every seventh day, but through all time. And through this arises the question for us, what sabbath God willed us to keep? For the Scriptures point to a sabbath eternal and a sabbath temporal. For Isaiah the prophet says, " y<?2^/- sabbaths my soul hateth;" *and in another place he says, " My sabbaths ye have profaned." 5 Whence we discern that the temporal sabbath is human, and the eternal jsabbath is accounted divine; concerning which He predicts through Isaiah: "And there shall be," He says, " month after month, and day * Comp. Isa- i- 2 as above, and Acts xiii. 17. ' Saeculi.
3 Or perhaps, "not affected, as a body, with human suffer- ings;" in allusion to such passages as Deut. viii. 4 xxix. 5, Neh.
«Ps. Ixxviii. (Ixxvii. in LXX.) 25; comp. John vi. 31, 32.
1 See Ex. xx. 8-ii and xii. 16 (especially in the LXX.).
9 This is not said by Isaiah; it is found in substance in Ezek. xxii. 8.
after day, and sabbath after sabbath; and all flesh shall come to adore in Jerusalem, saith the Lord;"'" which we understand to have been fulfilled* in the times of Christ, when " all flesh " — that is, every nation — " came to adore in Jerusalem " God the Father, through Jesus Christ His Son, as was predicted through the prophet: " Behold, proselytes through me shall go unto Thee."" Thus, therefore, before this temporal sabbath, there was withal an eternal sabbath foreshown and foretold; just as before the carnal circumcision there was withal a spiritual circumcision foreshown. In short, let them teach us, as we have al- ready premised, that Adam observed the sab- bath; or that Abel, when offering to God a holy victim, pleased Him by a religious rever- ence for the sabbath; or that Enoch, when translated, had been a keeper of the sabbath; or that Noah the ark-builder observed, on account of the deluge, an immense sabbath; or that Abraham, in observance of the sab- bath, offered Isaac his son; or that Mel- chizedek in his priesthood received the law of the sabbath.
But the Jews are sure to say, that ever since this precept was given through Moses, the observance has been binding. Manifest ac- cordingly it is, that the precept was not eter- nal nor spiritual, but temporary," which would one day cease. In short, so true is it that it is not in the exemption from work of the sab- bath— that is, of the seventh day — that the celebration of this solemnity is to consist, that Joshua the son of Nun, at the time that he was reducing the city Jericho by war, stated that he had received from God a pre- cept to order the People that priests should carry the ark of the testament of God seven days, making the circuit of the city; and thus, when the seventh day's circuit had been performed, the walls of the city would spon- taneously fall. '3 Which was so done; and when the space of the seventh day was fin- ished, just as was predicted, down fell the walls of the city. Whence it is manifestly shown, that in the number of the seven days there intervened a sabbath-day. For seven days, whencesoever they may have com- menced, must necessarily include within them a sabbath-day; on which day not only must the priests have worked, but the city must have been made a prey by the edge of the sword by all the people of Israel. Nor is it doubtful that they "wrought servile work," 'o Isa. Ixvi. 23 in LXX.
•• I am not acquainted with any such passage. Oehler refers to Isa. xlix. in his margin, but gives no verse, and omits to notice this passage of the present treatise in bis index.
AN ANSWER TO THE JEWS.
[chap. v.
when, in obedience to God's precept, they drave the preys of war. For in the times of tlie Maccabees, too, they did bravely in fight- ing on the sabbaths, and routed their foreign foes, and recalled the law of their fathers to the primitive style of life by fighting on the sabbaths.' Nor should I think it was any other law which they thus vindicated, than the one in which they remembered the exist- ence of the prescript touching "the daj^ of the sabbaths."^ Whence it is manifest that the force of such precepts was temporary, and respected the necessity of present circumstances; and that it was not with a view to its observance in perpetuity that God formerly gave them such a law.
CHAP. V -OF SACRIFICES.
So, again, we show that sacrifices of earthly oblations and of spiritual sacrifices ^ were pre- dicted; and, moreover, that from the begin- ning the earthly were foreshown, in the person of Cain, to be those of the "elder son," that is, of Israel; and the opposite sacrifices demonstrated to be those of the "younger son," Abel, that is, of our people. For the elder, Cain, offered gifts to God from the fruit of the earth; but the younger son, Abel, from the fruit of his ewes.
God had respect unto Abel, and unto his gifts; but unto Cain and unto his gifts He had not respect. And God said unto Cain, Why is thy counte- nance fallen? hast thou not — if thou offerest indeed aright, but dost not divide aright — sinned? Hold thy peace. For unto thee shall thy conversion be and he shall lord it over thee. And then Cain said unto Abel his brother. Let us go into the field: and he went away with him thither, and he slew him. And then God said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother's keeper? To whom God said. The voice of the blood of thy brother crieth forth unto me from the earth. Wherefore cursed is the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive the blood of thy brother. Groaning and trembling shalt thou be upon the earth, and every one who shall have found thee shall slay thee." ■• From this proceed- ing we gather that the twofold sacrifices of "the peoples" were even from the very be- ginning foreshown. In short, when the sac- erdotal law was being drawn up, through Moses, in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to » See Ex. xx. 8; Deut. v. 12, 15: in LXX. 3 This tautology is due to the author, not to the translator: " sacrificia...spiritahum sacrificiorum.
*See Gen. iv. i-14. But it is to be observed that the version fiven in our author differs widely in some particulars from the leb. and the LXX.
the people of Israel that sacrifices should in no other place be offered to God than in the land of promise; which the Lord God was about to give to " the people " Israel and to their brethren, in order that, on Israel's in- troduction thither, there should there be cel- ebrated sacrifices and holocausts, as well for sins as for souls; and nowhere else but in the holy land. 5 Why, accordingly, does the Spirit afterwards predict, through the prophets, that it should come to pass that in every place and in every land there should be offered sacri- fices to God? as He says through the angel Malachi, one of the twelve prophets: " I will not receive sacrifice from your hands; for from the rising sun unto the setting my Name hath been made famous among all the nations, saith the Lord Almighty: and in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name."* Again, in the Pslams, David says: "Bring to God, ye countries of the nations " — undoubt- edly because " unto every land " the preach- ing of the apostles had to "go out"' — "bring to God fame and honour; bring to God the sacrifices of His name: take up* vic- tims and enter into His courts."' For that it is not by earthly sacrifices, but by spiritual, that offering is to be made to God, we thus read, as it is written. An heart contribulate and humbled is a victim for God;"'° and elsewhere, " Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and render to the Highest thy vows." " Thus, accordingly, the spiritual " sacrifices of praise" are pointed to, and "an heart contribulate" is demonstrated an acceptable sacrifice to God. And thus, as carnal sacri- fices are understood to be reprobated — of which Isaiah withal speaks, saying, " To what end is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? saith the Lord " '- — so spiritual sacrifices are predicted '^ as accepted, as the prophets an- nounce. For, " even if ye shall have brought me," He says, "the finest wheat flour, it is a vain supplicatory gift: a thing execrable to me;" and again He says, "Your holocausts and sacrifices, and the fat of goats, and blood of bulls, I will not, not even if ye come to be seen by me: for who hath required these things from your hands?""* for "from the rising sun unto the setting, my Name hath been made famous among all the nations, 5 See Lev. xvii. 1-9; Deut. xii. 1-26.
7 Comp. Matt, xxs'iii. 19, 20, Mark xvi. 15, 16, Luke xxiv, 45- 48, with Ps. xix. 4 (xviii. 5 in LXX.), as explained in Rom. x. i8.
8 Tollite = Gr. apare. Perhaps = " away with.''
9 See Ps. xcvi. (xcv. in LXX.) 7, 8; and comp. xxix. (xxviii. in '3 Or, "foretold."
MComp. Isa. i. 11-14, especially in the LXX.
CHAT. VII.J AN ANSVVKR 1 0 1 HE JEWS.
saith the Lord."' But of the spiritual sac- rifices He adds, saying, " And in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name, saith the Lord.'"
CHAP. VI. — OF THE ABOLITION AND THE ABOL- ISHER OF THE OLD LAW.
Therefore, since it is manifest that a sab- bath temporal wa^s shown, and a sabbath eter- nal foretold; a circumcision carnal foretold, and a circumcision spiritual pre-indicated; a law temporal and a law eternal formally de- clared; sacrifices carnal and sacrifices spirit- ual foreshown; it follows that, after all these precepts had been given carnally, in time preceding, to the people Israel, there was to supervene a time whereat the precepts of the ancient Law and of the old ceremonies would cease, and the promise - of the new law, and the recognition of spiritual sacri- fices, and the promise of the New Testament, supervene; 3 while the light from on high would beam upon us who were sitting in darkness, and were being detained in the shadow of death.-* And so there is incum- bent on us a necessity 5 binding us, since we have premised that a new law was predicted by the prophets, and that not such as had been already given to their fathers at the time when He led them forth from the land of Egypt, * to show and prove, on the one hand, that that old Law has ceased, and on the other, that the promised new law is now in operation.
And, indeed, first we must inquire whether there be expected a giver of the new law, and an heir of the new testament, and a priest of the new sacrifices, and a purger of the new circumcision, and an observer of the eternal sabbath, to suppress the old law, and insti- tute the new testament, and offer the new sacrifices, and repress the ancient ceremonies, and suppress^ the old circumcision together with its own sabbath,^ and announce the new kingdom which is not corruptible. Inquire, I say, we must, whether this giver of the new law, observer of the spiritual sabbath, priest of the eternal sacrifices, eternal ruler of the eternal kingdom, be come or no: that, if he is already come, service may have to be ren- dered him; if he is not yet come, he may have to be awaited, until by his advent it be 1 See Mai. i. as above.
2 Or, " sending forth " — promissio.
3 The tautology is again due to the author.
4Comp. Luke i. 78, 79, Isa. ix. i, 2, with Matt. iv. 12-16. SComp. I Cor. ix. 16. 6 See ch. iii. above.
7 Here again the repetition is the author's.
8 Cum suo sibi sabbato. Unless the meaning be — which the context seems to forbid — " together with a sabbath of His own:" the Latinity is plainly incorrect.
manifest that the old Law's precepts are sup- pressed, and that the beginnings of the new law ought to arise. And, primarily, we must lay it down that the ancient Law and the prophets could not have ceased, unless He were come who was constantly announced, through the same Law and through the same prophets, as to come.
CHAP. VIl. — IHE QUESTION WHETHER CHRIST BE COME TAKEN UP.
Therefore upon this issue plant we foot to foot, whether the Christ who was constantly announced as to come be already come, or whether His coming be yet a subject of hope. For proof of which question itself, the times likewise must be examined by us when the prophets announced that the Christ would come; that, if we succeed in recognising that He has come within the limits of those times, we may without doubt believe Him to be the very one whose future coming was ever the theme of prophetic song, upon whom we — the nations, to wit — were ever announced as des- tined to believe; and that, when it shall have been agreed that He is come, we may un- doubtedly likewise believe that the new law has by Him been given, and not disavow the new testament in Him and through Him drawn up for us. For that Christ was to come we know that even the Jews do not attempt to disprove, inasmuch as it is to His advent that they are directing their hope. Nor need we inquire at more length concerning that matter, since in days bygone all the prophets have prophesied of it; as Isaiah: " Thus saith the Lord God to my Christ (the) Lord,' whose right hand I have holden, that the nations may hear Him: the powers of kings will I burst asunder; I will open before Him the gates, and the cities shall not be closed to Him." Which very thing we see fulfilled. For whose right hand does God the Father hold but Christ's, His Son? — whom all nations have heard, that is, whom all nations have believed, — whose preachers, withal, the apos- tles, are pointed to in the Psalms of David: " Into the universal earth," sayshe, " is gone out their sound, and unto the ends of the earth their words." '° For upon whom else have the universal nations believed, but upon the Christ who is already come? For whom have the nations believed, — Parthians, Medes, Elam- ites, and they who inhabit Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and they who 9 The reference is to Isa. xlv. i. A glance at the LXX. will at once explain the difference between the reading of our author and the genuine reading. One letter— an " i "—makes all the differ- ence. For Kupo* has been read Kvpiu. In the Eng, ver, we read " His A nointed." 'o Ps. xix. 4 (xviii. 5 in LXX.) »nd Rom. x. 18.
AN ANSWER TO THE JEWS.
[chap. VIII.
dwell in Pontus, and Asia, and Pamphylia, tarriers in Egypt, and inhabiters of the region of Africa which is beyond Cyrene, Romans and sojourners, yes, and in Jerusalem Jews,' and all other nations; as, for instance, by this time, the varied races of the Gaetulians, and manifold confines of the Moors, all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons — inac- cessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ, and of the Sarmatians, and Dacians, and Germans, and Scythians, and of many remote nations, and of provinces and islands many, to us unknown, and which we can scarce enumerate? In all which places the name of the Christ who is already come reigns, as of Him before whom the gates of all cities have been opened, and to whom none are closed, before whom iron bars have been crumbled, and brazen gates ^ opened. Al- though there be withal a spiritual sense to be affixed to these expressions, — that the hearts of individuals, blockaded in various ways by the devil, are unbarred by the faith of Christ, — still they have been evidently fulfilled, in- asmuch as in all these places dwells the " people " of the Name of Christ. For who could have reigned over all?iatio?is but Christ, God's Son, who was ever announced as des- tined to reign over all to eternity? For if Solomon "reigned," why, it was within the confines of Judea merely: " from Beersheba unto Dan " the boundaries of his kingdom are marked. 3 If, moreover, Darius "reigned" over the Babylonians and Parthians, he had not power ^w all?iations; if Pharaoh, or who- ever succeeded him in his hereditary kingdom, over the Egyptians, in that country merely did he possess his kingdom's dominion; if Nebuchadnezzar with his petty kings, " from India unto Ethiopia" he had his kingdom's boundaries; 5 if Alexander the Macedonian, he did not hold more than universal Asia, and other regions, after he had quite conquered them; if the Germans, to this day they are not suffered to cross their own limits; the Britons are shut within the circuit of their own ocean; the nations of the Moors, and the bar- barism of the Gaetulians, are blockaded by the Romans, lest they exceed the confines of their own regions. What shall I say of the Romans themselves, s who fortify their own ' See Acts ii. 9, 10; but comp. ver. s- *SeeIsa. xlv. i, 2 (especially in Lowth'sversion and the T^XX.).
3 See I Kings iv. 25. (In the LXX. it is 3 Kings iv. 25; but the verse is omitted in Tischendorf's text, ed. Lips, i860, though given in his footnotes there.) The statement in the text differs slightly from Oehler's reading; where I suspect there is a trans- position of a syllable, and that for " in finibus Judce tantum, a Bersabea,'^ we ought to read " in finibus Judt^ce tantum, a Ber- sabe." See dejej. c. ix.
s[Dr. AllLx thmks these statements define the Empire after empire with garrisons of their own legions, nor can extend the might of their kingdom beyond these nations? But Christ's Name is extending everj'where, believed everywhere, worshipped by all the above-enumerated nations, reigning everywhere, adored every- where, conferred equally everywhere upon all. No king, with Him, finds greater favour, no barbarian lesser joy; no dignities or pedi- grees enjoy distinctions of merit; to all He is equal, to all King, to all Judge, to all " God and Lord." * Nor would you hesitate to be- lieve what we asseverate, since you see it taking place.
CHAP. VIII. — OF THE TIMES OF CHRIST's BIRTH AND PASSION, AND OF JERUSALEM'S DESTRUC- TION,