order that Jesus Christ should be everywhere announced, Jesus Christ
came in the manner and time foretold;
That the Jews have since been scattered abroad under a curse, yet
nevertheless still exist.
The creation and the deluge being past, and God not intending any
more to destroy the world, nor to create it anew, nor to give any
such great proofs of himself, he began to establish a people on the
earth, formed of set purpose, which should last until the coming of
that people whom Messiah should mould by his spirit.
The Jews who were called to subdue the nations and their kings were
slaves of sin, and the Christians whose calling has been to be
servants and subjects, are free children.
The devil troubled the zeal of the Jews before Jesus Christ, because
he would have been their salvation, but not since.
The Jewish people mocked of the Gentiles, the Christian people
persecuted.
_Republic._--The Christian and even the Jewish Republic has only had
God for master, as Philo the Jew notices, _On Monarchy_.
When they fought, they did so for God alone, their chief hope was in
God alone, they considered their towns as belonging to God, and they
kept them for God. I Chron. xix. 13.
The sceptre was not interrupted by the carrying away into Babylon,
because the return was promised and foretold.
A single phrase of David or of Moses, as for instance that God will
circumcise the heart, enables us to judge of their spirit. If all
the rest of their language were ambiguous, and left it doubtful
whether they were philosophers or Christians, one single sentence of
this kind would determine all the rest, as one sentence of Epictetus
determines the character of the rest to be the contrary. So far we
may be in doubt, but not afterwards.
While the prophets were for maintaining the law, the people were
negligent, but since there have been no more prophets, zeal has taken
their place.
The zeal of the Jewish people for the law, especially since there
have been no more prophets.
Maccabees after they had no more prophets. The Masorah after Jesus
Christ.
_THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE SACRED BOOKS._
_The Premiss._--Moses was a man of genius. If then he ruled himself
by his reason, he should say nothing clearly which was directly
against reason.
So all the apparent weaknesses are strength. Example: the two
genealogies in Saint Matthew and Saint Luke. What can be more clear
than that this was not concerted?
_Proof of Moses._--Why should Moses make the lives of men so long,
and their generations so few?
Because it is not the length of years, but the number of generations
which renders matters obscure.
For truth is impaired only by the change of men. And yet Moses places
two things, the most memorable that can be imagined, that is to say
the creation and the deluge, so near that we can reach from one to
the other.
_Another proof._--The longevity of the patriarchs, instead of
causing the loss of past history, was the rather serviceable for its
preservation. For if we are not always well instructed in the history
of our ancestors, it is because we have never lived much with them,
and because they are often dead before we have ourselves attained the
age of reason. But when men lived so long, children lived long with
their parents, and long conversed with them. Now, their conversation
could only be of the history of their ancestors, since to that all
history was reduced, and men did not study science or art, which now
take up so much of our daily discourse. We see also that at that time
men took special care to preserve their genealogies.
Shem, who saw Lamech, who saw Adam, saw also Jacob, who saw those who
saw Moses; therefore the deluge and the creation are true. This is
conclusive among certain people who clearly understand it.
Josephus conceals the shame of his nation.
Moses does not conceal his own shame nor....
_Quis mihi det ut omnes prophetent?_
He was tired of the people.
When the creation of the people began to stand at a distance, God
provided a single contemporary historian, and appointed a whole
people as the guardians of this book, in order that the history might
be the most authentic in all the world, that all men might learn a
thing so necessary to know, yet so impossible to be known in any
other way.
If the story in Esdras is credible, then it must be believed that
Scripture is Holy Scripture. For this story is founded only on the
authority of those who allege that of the Seventy, which shows that
the Scripture is holy.
Therefore if the tale be true, we find our proof therein, if not
we have it elsewhere. Thus those who would ruin the truth of our
Religion, founded on Moses, establish it by the same authority by
which they attack it. Thus by this providence it still exists.
_On Esdras._--The story that the books were burnt with the temple
shown to be false by The Book of Maccabees. _Jeremiah gave them the
law._
The story that he recited the whole by heart. Josephus and Esdras
note _that he read the book_. Baronius, Ann. 180. _Nullus penitus
Hebræorum antiquorum reperitur qui tradiderit libros periisse et per
Esdram esse restitutos, nisi in IV. Esdræ._
The story that he changed the letters.
Philo, _in Vita Moysis_: _Illa lingua ac charactere quo antiquitus
scripta est lex, sic permansit usque ad LXX_.
Josephus says the Law was in Hebrew when it was translated by the
Seventy.
Under Antiochus and Vespasian, when they wished to abolish the books,
and when there was no prophet, they could not do so. And under the
Babylonians when there had been no persecution, and when there were
so many prophets, would they have allowed them to be burnt?
Josephus derides the Greeks who would not allow....
Tertullian.--_Perinde potuit abolefactam eam violentia cataclysmi
in spiritu rursus reformare, quemadmodum et Hierosolymis Babylonia
expugnatione deletis, omne instrumentum Judaicæ literaturæ per Esdram
constat restauratum._ Lib. I. _De Cultu femin._ cap. iii.
He says that Noah might as easily have restored by the spirit the
book of Enoch, destroyed by the deluge, as Esdras have restored the
Scriptures lost during the Captivity.
Θεὸς ἐν τῇ ἐπὶ Ναβουχοδονόσορ αἰχμαλωσίᾳ τοῦ λαοῦ διαφθαρεισῶν τῶν
γραφῶν, ἐνέπνευσε Ἐσδρᾷ τῷ ἱερεῖ ἐκ τῆς φυλῆς Λεοὶ τοῦς τῶν προγεγονότων
προφητῶν πάντας ἀναταξάσθαι λόγους, καὶ ἀποκαταστῆσαι τῷ λαῷ
τὴν διὰ Μωσέως νομοθησίαν. He alleges this to prove that it is not
incredible that the Seventy should have explained the holy Scriptures
with that uniformity which we admire in them. Euseb. lib. v. Hist.
cap. 8. And he took that from Saint Irenæus.
Saint Hilary in his preface to the Psalms says that Esdras arranged
the Psalms in order.
The origin of this tradition comes from the Book of Esdras.
_Deus glorificatus est, et Scripturæ veræ divinæ creditæ sunt,
omnibus eandem et eisdem verbis et eisdem nominibus recitantibus
ab initio usque ad finem, uti et præsentes gentes cognoscerent
quoniam per inspirationem Dei interpretatæ sunt Scripturæ, et non
esset mirabile Deum hoc in eis operatum, quando in ea captivitate
populi quæ facta est a Nabuchodonosor corruptis Scripturis et
post septuaginta annos Judæis descendentibus in regionem suam, et
post deinde temporibus Artaxexis Persarum regis inspiravit Hesdræ
sacerdoti tribus Levi præteritorum prophetarum omnes rememorare
sermones et restituere populo eam legem quæ data est per Moysen._
_Against the Story in Esdras_, II. Maccab. 2. Josephus,
_Antiquities_, II. 1.--Cyrus took occasion from the prophecy of
Isaiah to release the people. The Jews held property in peace under
Cyrus in Babylon, therefore they might well have the Law.
Josephus, in the whole history of Esdras, says not a single word of
this restoration.--II. Kings, xvii. 37.
Scripture has provided passages of consolation and warning for every
condition of life.
Nature seems to have done the same thing by her two infinities,
natural and moral, for we shall always have those who are higher and
lower, who are more and less able, who are noble and in low estate,
in order to abate our pride, and raise our lowliness.
_Order, against the objection that the Scripture has no order._--The
heart has its own order; the mind too has its own, which is by
premisses and demonstrations, that of the heart is wholly different.
It were absurd to prove that we are worthy of love by putting forth
in order the causes of love.
Jesus Christ and Saint Paul use the order of charity, not of the
intellect, for they wish to warm, not to teach; the same with Saint
Augustine. This order consists mainly in digressions on each point
which may illustrate the main end, and keep it ever in view.
God and the Apostles foreseeing that the seed of pride would cause
heresies to spring up, and not wishing to give them occasion to arise
by defining them, have placed in the Scripture and the prayers of the
Church contrary words and sentences to produce their fruit in time.
So in morals he gives charity to produce fruits contrary to lust.
He who knows the will of his master will be beaten with more stripes,
because of the power he has by his knowledge. _Qui justus est
justificetur adhuc_, because of the power which he has by justice.
From him who has received most will the greatest account be demanded,
because the aid received has given him greater power.
There is an universal and essential difference between the actions of
the will and all other actions.
The will is one of the chief organs of belief, not that it forms
belief, but that things are true or false according to the side on
which we view them. The will which chooses one side rather than the
other turns away the mind from considering the qualities of all that
it does not like to see, thus the mind, moving in accord with the
will, stays to look at the side it chooses, and so judges by what it
sees.
All things work together for good to the elect, even the obscurities
of Scripture, which they honour because of what is divinely clear.
And all things work together for evil to the reprobate, even what is
clear, which they blaspheme because of the obscurities they do not
understand.
How many stars have telescopes discovered for us which did not exist
for the philosophers of old. Men have roundly taken holy Scripture to
task in regard to the great multitude of stars, saying: "We know that
there are only a thousand and twenty-two."
The meaning changes according to the words which express it. The
meaning receives its dignity from words instead of giving it. We must
seek examples of this.
Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings
differently arranged produce different effects.
_THE PROPHECIES._
The prophecies are the strongest proofs of Jesus Christ. For these
therefore God has made the most provision; since the event which has
fulfilled them is a miracle existing from the birth of the Church
to the end. Therefore God raised up prophets during sixteen hundred
years, and during four hundred years afterwards he dispersed all
these prophecies with all the Jews, who bore them into all regions of
the world. Such was the preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ,
whose Gospel exacting belief from every man made it necessary not
only that there should be prophecies to inspire this belief, but that
these prophecies should be spread throughout the whole world, so that
the whole world should embrace it.
_Prophecies._--If one man alone had made a book of predictions
concerning Jesus Christ, both as to the time and the manner of
his coming, and if Jesus Christ had come in agreement with these
prophecies, the fact would have had infinite force.
But in this case there is much more. Here is a succession of men
for the space of four thousand years, who without interruption or
variation, follow one another in foretelling the same event. Here is
a whole people announcing it, existing for four thousand years, to
testify in a body their certainty, from which they cannot be diverted
by all the threatenings and persecutions brought to bear against
them; this is in a far greater degree important.
But it was not enough that the prophecies existed, they needed also
distribution through all places, and preservation through all time.
And in order that this agreement might not be taken as an effect of
chance, it was necessary it should be foretold.
It is much more glorious for the Messiah that they should be
spectators and even instruments of his glory, beyond the fact that
God had preserved him.
_Proof._--Prophecy with accomplishment.
That which preceded, and that which followed Jesus Christ.
The prophecies concerning the Messiah are mingled with some
concerning other matters, so that neither the prophecies of the
Messiah should be without proof, nor the special prophecies without
fruit.
_Non habemus regem nisi Cæsarem._ Therefore Jesus Christ was the
Messiah, because they had no longer any king but a stranger, and
because they would have no other.
The eternal kingdom of the race of David, II. Chron., by all the
prophecies, and with an oath. And it was not temporally accomplished.
Jer. xxxiii. 20.
Zeph. iii. 9.--"I will give my words to the Gentiles, that all may
serve me with one consent."
Ezekiel xxxvii 25.--"My servant David shall be their prince for ever."
Exodus iv. 22.--"Israel is my first born."
We might easily think that when the prophets foretold that the
sceptre would not depart from Judah until the advent of the eternal
king, they spoke to flatter the people, and that their prophecy was
proved false by Herod. But to show that this was not their meaning,
and that on the contrary they well knew that the temporal kingdom
should cease, they said they would be without a king, and without a
prince, and for a long time. Hosea iii. 4.
_Prophecies._--That Jesus Christ will sit on the right hand till God
has put his enemies under his feet.
Therefore he will not subject them himself.
The time of the first advent was foretold, the time of the second
is not so, because the first was to be secret, the second must be
glorious, and so manifest that even his enemies will recognise it.
But as his first coming was to be obscure, and to be known only of
those who searched the Scriptures....
The prophecies must be unintelligible to the wicked, Daniel xii. 10,
Hosea xiv. 9, but intelligible to those who are well instructed.
The prophecies which represent him poor, represent him master of the
nations.--Is. lii. 16, etc liii. Zech. ix. 9.
The prophecies which foretell the time foretell him only as master of
the Gentiles and suffering, and not as in the clouds nor as judge.
And those which represent him thus as judge and in glory do not
specify the time.
Do you think that the prophecies cited in the Gospel were reported to
make you believe? No, but to prevent your believing.
_Prophecies._--The time was foretold by the state of the Jewish
people, by the state of the heathen world, by the state of the
temple, by the number of years.
It is daring to predict the same affair in so many ways. It was
necessary that the four idolatrous or pagan monarchies, the end of
the kingdom of Judah, and the seventy weeks should coincide, and all
this before the second temple was destroyed.
_Prophecies._--The seventy weeks of Daniel are equivocal in the term
of commencement, because of the terms of the prophecy, and in the
term of conclusion because of the differences in the chronologists.
But all this difference extends only to two hundred years.
We understand the prophecies only when we see the events occur, thus
the proofs of retreat, discretion, silence, etc., are evidence only
to those who know and believe them.
Joseph so interior in a law so exterior.
Exterior penances dispose to interior, as humiliations to humility.
So the....
The more I examine them the more I find truths in them, both in those
which preceded and those which followed, both the synagogue which
was foretold, and the wretches who adhere to it, and who, being our
enemies, are admirable witnesses of the truth of these prophecies,
wherein their misery and even their blindness is foretold.
I find this sequence, our Religion wholly divine in its authority, in
its duration, in its perpetuity, in its morality, in its conduct, its
doctrine, and its effects.
The frightful darkness of the Jews foretold. _Eris palpans in
meridie. Dabitur liber scienti literas, et dicet: Non possum legere._
Hosea i. 9. "Ye shall not be my people and I will not be your God,"
when you are multiplied after the dispersion. "In the places where it
was said: Ye are not my people, I will call them my people."
_Predictions._--That under the fourth monarchy, before the
destruction of the second temple, before the dominion of the Jews was
taken away, and in the seventieth week of Daniel, while the second
temple was still standing, the Gentiles should be instructed, and
brought to the knowledge of the God worshipped by the Jews, that
those who loved him should be delivered from their enemies, and
filled with his fear and love.
And it came to pass that under the fourth monarchy, before the
destruction of the second temple, etc, the Gentiles in crowds
worshipped God and lived an angelic life. Maidens dedicated their
virginity and their life to God, men gave up their pleasures, what
Plato was only able to effect upon a few men, chosen and instructed
to that end, a secret force, by the power of a few words, now wrought
upon a hundred million ignorant men.
The rich left their wealth, children left the luxurious homes of
their parents to go into the austerity of the desert, etc., according
to Philo the Jew. All this was foretold long ages ago. For two
thousand years no Gentile had worshipped the God of the Jews, and at
the time foretold, the crowd of Gentiles worshipped this only God.
The temples were destroyed, the very kings bowed themselves under the
cross. All this was of the Spirit of God spread abroad upon the earth.
_Holiness._--_Effundam spiritum meum._--All nations had been in
unbelief and lust; the whole world was now ablaze with love. Princes
quitted their state, maidens suffered martyrdom. This power sprang
from the advent of Messiah, this was the effect and these the tokens
of his coming.
_Predictions._--It was foretold that in the time of Messiah he would
come and establish a new covenant, such as should make them forget
the coming out from Egypt, Jer. xxiii. 5, Is. xliii. 16, that he
would put his Law not in externals, but in the heart, that Jesus
Christ would put his fear, which had been only from without, in the
midst of the heart. Who does not see the Christian law in all this?
_Prophecies._--That the Jews would reject Jesus Christ, and would
themselves be rejected of God because the choice vine brought
forth only wild grapes; that the chosen people should be disloyal,
ungrateful, incredulous, _populum non credentem et contradicentem_;
that God would strike them with blindness, and that in full mid-day
they would grope like blind men; that his messenger should go before
him.
"... Then shall a man no more teach his neighbour, saying, There is
the Lord, _for God will make himself felt by all, your sons shall
prophesy_. _I will put my spirit and my fear in your heart._"
All that is the same thing. To prophesy is to speak of God, not by
outward proofs, but by a feeling interior and direct.
_Prophecies._--_Transfixerunt_, Zech. xii. 10.
That there should come a deliverer to crush the demon's head, and to
free his people from their sins, _ex omnibus iniquitatibus_. That
there should be a new and eternal covenant, and a new and eternal
priesthood after the order of Melchisedek, that the Christ should be
glorious, powerful, mighty, and yet so miserable that he would not
be recognised, nor taken for what he is, but be rejected and slain,
that his people which denied him should be no more his people, that
the idolaters would receive him and trust in him, that he would quit
Zion to reign in the centre of idolatry, that the Jews should exist
for ever, that he would spring from Judah, and at a time when there
should be no longer a king.
That Jesus Christ would be small in his beginnings, and afterwards
would increase. The little stone of Daniel.
That he would teach men the perfect way,
And never has there come before him nor after him any man who has
taught anything divine approaching this.
That then idolatry would be overthrown, that the Messiah would cast
down all idols, and would bring men into the worship of the true God.
That the idol temples would be overthrown, and that among all
nations and in all places of the world men would offer to God a pure
sacrifice, not of beasts.
That he would be king of the Jews and Gentiles. And we see this king
of Jews and Gentiles oppressed by both, both equally conspiring
his death, we see him bear rule over both, destroying the worship
established by Moses in Jerusalem its centre, where he placed his
earliest Church, as well as the worship of idols in Rome its centre,
where he placed his chief Church.
No Gentile from Moses to Jesus Christ according to the Rabbis
themselves. The crowd of the Gentiles after Jesus Christ believed in
the books of Moses and observed their essence and spirit, casting
away only what was useless.
_Omnis Judæa regio, et Jerosolomitæ universi et
baptisabantur._--Because of all the conditions of men who came there.
These stones _can_ become the children of Abraham.
Is. i. 21. Change of good into evil and the vengeance of God.
Is. x. 1. _Væ qui condunt leges iniquas._
Is. xxvi. 20. _Vade populus meus, intra in cubicula tua, claude ostia
tua super te, abscondere modicum ad momentum, donec pertranseat
indignatio._
Is. xxviii. 1. _Væ coronæ superbiæ._
_Miracles._.--Is. xxxiii. 9. _Luxit, et elanguit terra: confusus est
Libanus, et obsorduit, etc._
_Nunc consurgam, dicit Dominus: nunc exaltabor, nunc sublevabor_.
Is. xl. 17. _Omnes gentes quasi non sint._
Is. xli. 26. _Quis annunciavit ab exordio ut sciamus: et a principio
ut dicamus: Justus es?_
Is. xliii. 13. _Operabor, et quis avertet illud?_
Jer. xi. 21. _Non prophetabis in nomine Domini, et non morieris in
manibus nostris._
_Propterea hæc dicit Dominus._
Jer. xv. 2. _Quod si dixerint ad te: Quo egrediemur? dices ad eos:
Hæc dicit Dominus: Qui ad mortem, ad mortem: et qui ad gladium,
ad gladium: et qui ad famem, ad famem: et qui ad captivitatem, ad
captivitatem._
Jer. xvii. 9. _Pravum est cor omnium, et inscrutabile: quis cognoscet
illud?_ that is to say, who can know all its evil, for it is already
known to be wicked. _Ego Dominus scrutans cor, et probans renes._
_Et dixerunt: Venite et cogitemus contra Jeremiam cogitationes, non
enim peribit lex a sacerdote, neque sermo a propheta._
Jer. xvii. 17. _Non sis tu mihi formidini, spes mea tu in die
afflictionis._
Trust in exterior sacrifices.
Jer. vii. 14. _Faciam domui huic, in qua invocatum est nomen meum,
et in qua vos habetis fiduciam: et loco, quem dedi vobis et patribus
vestris, sicut feci Silo._
Exterior sacrifice is not the essential point.
_Tu ergo noli orare pro populo hoc._
Jer. vii. 22. _Quia non sum locutus cum patribus vestris, et
non præcepi eis in die, qua eduxi eos de Terra Ægypti, de verbo
holocautomatum, et victimarum._
_Sed hoc verbum præcepi eis, dicens: Audite vocem meam, et ero vobis
Deus, et vos eritis mihi populus: et ambulate in omni via, quam
mandavi vobis, ut bene sit vobis. Et non audierunt._
Exterior sacrifice is not the essential point.
Jer. xi. 13. _Secundum numerum enim civitatum tuarum erant dii tui
Juda: et secundum numerum viarum Jerusalem posuisti aras confusionis.
Tu ergo noli orare pro populo hoc._
A multitude of doctrines.
Is. xliv. 20. _Neque dicet: Forte mendacium est in dextera mea._
Is. xliv. 21, etc. _Memento horum Jacob, et Israel, quoniam servus
meus es tu. Formavi te, servus meus es tu Israel, ne obliviscaris
mei._
_Delevi ut nubem iniquitates tuas, et quasi nebulam peccata tua:
revertere ad me, quoniam redemi te._
xliv. 23, 24. _Laudate cæli, quoniam misericordiam fecit Dominus:...,
quoniam redemit Dominus Jacob, et Israel gloriabitur. Hæc dicit
Dominus redemptor tuus, et formator tuus ex utero: Ego sum Dominus,
faciens omnia, extendens cælos solus, stabiliens terram, et nullus
mecum._