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| Chapter VIII.—The gifts of the Holy Spirit which we receive prepare us for incorruption, render us spiritual, and separate us from carnal men. These two classes are signified by the clean and unclean animals in the legal dispensation.
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Chapter VIII.—The gifts of the Holy
Spirit which we receive prepare us for incorruption, render us spiritual, and
separate us from carnal men. These two classes are signified by the clean and
unclean animals in the legal dispensation.
1. But we do now receive a certain
portion of His Spirit, tending towards perfection, and preparing us for
incorruption, being little by little accustomed to receive and bear God;
which also the apostle terms “an earnest,” that is, a part of
the honour which has been promised us by God, where he says in the
Epistle to the Ephesians, “In which ye also, having heard the word
of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, believing in which we have been
sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our
inheritance.”4495
This earnest,
therefore, thus dwelling in us, renders us spiritual even now, and the
mortal is swallowed up by immortality.4496
“For
ye,” he declares, “are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit,
if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.”4497
This, however does not take place by a casting away of the flesh,
but by the impartation of the Spirit. For those to whom he was writing
were not without flesh, but they were those who had received the Spirit
of God, “by which we cry, Abba, Father.”4498
If therefore, at the present time, having the earnest, we do cry,
“Abba, Father,” what shall it be when, on rising again, we
behold Him face to face; when all the members shall burst out into a
continuous hymn of triumph, glorifying Him who raised them from the dead,
and gave the gift of eternal life? For if the earnest, gathering man into
itself, does even now cause him to cry, “Abba, Father,” what
shall the complete grace of the Spirit effect, which shall be given to
men by God? It will render us like unto Him, and accomplish the will4499
| 4499 This is adopting
Harvey’s emendation of “voluntatem” for
“voluntate.” | of the Father; for it shall make man
after the image and likeness of God.
2. Those persons, then, who possess the
earnest of the Spirit, and who are not enslaved by the lusts of the
flesh, but are subject to the Spirit, and who in all things walk
according to the light of reason, does the apostle properly term
“spiritual,” because the Spirit of God dwells in them. Now,
spiritual men shall not be incorporeal spirits; but our substance, that
is, the union of flesh and spirit, receiving the Spirit of God, makes up
the spiritual man. But those who do indeed reject the Spirit’s
counsel, and are the slaves of fleshly lusts, and lead lives contrary to
reason, and who, without restraint, plunge headlong into their own
desires, having no longing after the Divine Spirit, do live after the
manner of swine and of dogs; these men, [I say], does the apostle very
properly term “carnal,” because they have no thought of
anything else except carnal things.
3. For the same reason, too, do the prophets compare
them to irrational animals, on account of the irrationality of their
conduct, saying, “They have become as horses raging for the
females; each one of them neighing after his neighbour’s
wife.”4500
And again, “Man, when
he was in honour, was made like unto cattle.”4501
This denotes that, for his own fault, he is likened to cattle, by
rivalling their irrational life. And we also, as the custom is, do
designate men of this stamp as cattle and irrational beasts.
4. Now the law has figuratively predicted all
these, delineating man by the [various] animals:4502
whatsoever of these,
says [the Scripture], have a double hoof and ruminate, it proclaims as
clean; but whatsoever of them do not possess one or other of these
[properties], it sets aside by themselves as unclean. Who then are the
clean? Those who make their way by faith steadily towards the Father and
the Son; for this is denoted by the steadiness of those which divide the
hoof; and they meditate day and night upon the words of God,4503
that they may be adorned with good works: for
this is the meaning of the ruminants. The unclean, however, are those
which do neither divide the hoof nor ruminate; that is, those persons who
have neither faith in God, nor do meditate on His words: and such is the
abomination of the Gentiles. But as to those animals which do indeed chew
the cud, but have not the double hoof, and are themselves unclean, we
have in them a figurative description of the Jews, who certainly have the
words of God in their mouth, but who do not fix their rooted stedfastness
in the Father and in the Son; wherefore they are an unstable generation.
For those animals which have the hoof all in one piece easily slip; but
those which have it divided are more sure-footed, their cleft hoofs
succeeding each other as they advance, and the one hoof supporting the
other. In like manner, too, those are unclean which have the double hoof
but do not ruminate: this is plainly an indication of all heretics, and
of those who do not meditate on the words of God, neither are adorned
with works of righteousness; to whom also the Lord says, “Why call
ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say to you?”4504
For men of this stamp do indeed say that they
believe in the Father and the Son, but they never meditate as they should
upon the things of God, neither are they adorned with works of
righteousness; but, as I have already observed, they have adopted the
lives of swine and of dogs, giving themselves over to filthiness, to
gluttony, and recklessness of all sorts. Justly, therefore, did the
apostle call all such “carnal” and “animal,”4505
—[all those, namely], who through their own unbelief and luxury do
not receive the Divine Spirit, and in their various phases cast out from
themselves the life-giving Word, and walk stupidly after their own lusts:
the prophets, too, spake of them as beasts of burden and wild beasts;
custom likewise has viewed them in the light of cattle and irrational
creatures; and the law has pronounced them unclean.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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