Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXVIII.—Those persons prove themselves senseless who exaggerate the mercy of Christ, but are silent as to the judgment, and look only at the more abundant grace of the New Testament; but, forgetful of the greater degree of perfection which it demands from us, they endeavour to show that there is another God beyond Him who created the world.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXVIII.—Those persons prove
themselves senseless who exaggerate the mercy of Christ, but are silent as to
the judgment, and look only at the more abundant grace of the New Testament;
but, forgetful of the greater degree of perfection which it demands from us,
they endeavour to show that there is another God beyond Him who created the
world.
1. Inasmuch,
then, as in both Testaments there is the same righteousness of God
[displayed] when God takes vengeance, in the one case indeed typically,
temporarily, and more moderately; but in the other, really, enduringly,
and more rigidly: for the fire is eternal, and the wrath of God which
shall be revealed from heaven from the face of our Lord (as David also
says, “But the face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to
cut off the remembrance of them from the earth”4198
), entails a heavier punishment on those who incur it,—the
elders pointed out that those men are devoid of sense, who, [arguing]
from what happened to those who formerly did not obey God, do endeavour
to bring in another Father, setting over against [these punishments] what
great things the Lord had done at His coming to save those who received
Him, taking compassion upon them; while they keep silence with regard to
His judgment; and all those things which shall come upon such as have
heard His words, but done them not, and that it were better for them if
they had not been born,4199
and that it shall be
more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the judgment than for that city
which did not receive the word of His disciples.4200
2. For as, in the New Testament, that faith of men [to
be placed] in God has been increased, receiving in addition [to what was
already revealed] the Son of God, that man too might be a partaker of
God; so is also our walk in life required to be more circumspect, when we
are directed not merely to abstain from evil actions, but even from evil
thoughts, and from idle words, and empty talk, and scurrilous
language:4201
| 4201
[Eph. v. 4. Even from the εὐτραπελία
which might signify a bon-mot, literally, and which certainly is
not “scurrility,” unless the apostle was ironical, reflecting
on jokes with heathen considered “good.”] | thus
also the punishment of those who do not believe the Word of God, and
despise His advent, and are turned away backwards, is increased; being
not merely temporal, but rendered also eternal. For to whomsoever the
Lord shall say, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
fire,”4202
these shall be damned for
ever; and to whomsoever He shall say, “Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you for eternity,”4203
these do receive the kingdom for ever, and
make constant advance in it; since there is one and the same God the
Father, and His Word, who has been always present with the human race, by
means indeed of various dispensations, and has wrought out many things,
and saved from the beginning those who are saved, (for these are they who
love God, and follow the Word of God according to the class to which they
belong,) and has judged those who are judged, that is, those who forget
God, and are blasphemous, and transgressors of His word.
3. For the self-same heretics already mentioned by us
have fallen away from themselves, by accusing the Lord, in whom they say
that they believe. For those points to which they call attention with
regard to the God who then awarded temporal punishments to the
unbelieving, and smote the Egyptians, while He saved those that were
obedient; these same [facts, I say,] shall nevertheless repeat themselves
in the Lord, who judges for eternity those whom He doth judge, and lets
go free for eternity those whom He does let go free: and He shall [thus]
be discovered, according to the language used by these men, as having
been the cause of their most heinous sin to those who laid hands upon
Him, and pierced Him. For if He had not so come, it follows that these
men could not have become the slayers of their Lord; and if He had not
sent prophets to them, they certainly could not have killed them, nor the
apostles either. To those, therefore, who assail us, and say, If the
Egyptians had not been afflicted with plagues, and, when pursuing after
Israel, been choked in the sea, God could not have saved His people, this
answer may be given;—Unless, then, the Jews had become the
slayers of the Lord (which did, indeed, take eternal life away from
them), and, by killing the apostles and persecuting the Church, had
fallen into an abyss of wrath, we could not have been saved. For as they
were saved by means of the blindness of the Egyptians, so are we, too, by
that of the Jews; if, indeed, the death of the Lord is the condemnation
of those who fastened Him to the cross, and who did not believe His
advent, but the salvation of those who believe in Him. For the apostle
does also say in the Second [Epistle] to the Corinthians: “For we
are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them which are saved, and in
them which perish: to the one indeed the savour of death unto death,
but to the other the savour of life unto life.”4204
To whom, then, is there the savour of death
unto death, unless to those who believe not neither are subject to the
Word of God? And who are they that did even then give themselves over to
death? Those men, doubtless, who do not believe, nor submit themselves to
God. And again, who are they that have been saved and received the
inheritance? Those, doubtless, who do believe God, and who have continued
in His love; as did Caleb [the son] of Jephunneh and Joshua [the son] of
Nun,4205
and innocent children,4206
who have had no sense of evil. But who are they
that are saved now, and receive life eternal? Is it not those who love
God, and who believe His promises, and who “in malice have become
as little children?”4207
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
