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| Chapter XXVI.—John and Daniel have predicted the dissolution and desolation of the Roman Empire, which shall precede the end of the world and the eternal kingdom of Christ. The Gnostics are refuted, those tools of Satan, who invent another Father different from the Creator.
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Chapter XXVI.—John and Daniel have
predicted the dissolution and desolation of the Roman Empire, which shall
precede the end of the world and the eternal kingdom of Christ. The Gnostics are
refuted, those tools of Satan, who invent another Father different from the
Creator.
1. In a still
clearer light has John, in the Apocalypse, indicated to the Lord’s
disciples what shall happen in the last times, and concerning the ten
kings who shall then arise, among whom the empire which now rules [the
earth] shall be partitioned. He teaches us what the ten horns shall be
which were seen by Daniel, telling us that thus it had been said to him:
“And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, who have
received no kingdom as yet, but shall receive power as if kings one hour
with the beast. These have one mind, and give their strength and power to
the beast. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall
overcome them, because He is the Lord of lords and the King of
kings.”4676
It is manifest,
therefore, that
of these [potentates], he who is to come
shall slay three, and subject the remainder to his power, and that he
shall be himself the eighth among them. And they shall lay Babylon waste,
and burn her with fire, and shall give their kingdom to the beast, and
put the Church to flight. After that they shall be destroyed by the
coming of our Lord. For that the kingdom must be divided, and thus come
to ruin, the Lord [declares when He] says: “Every kingdom divided
against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided
against itself shall not stand.”4677
It must
be, therefore, that the kingdom, the city, and the house be divided into
ten; and for this reason He has already foreshadowed the partition and
division [which shall take place]. Daniel also says particularly, that
the end of the fourth kingdom consists in the toes of the image seen by
Nebuchadnezzar, upon which came the stone cut out without hands; and as
he does himself say: “The feet were indeed the one part iron, the
other part clay, until the stone was cut out without hands, and struck
the image upon the iron and clay feet, and dashed them into pieces, even
to the end.”4678
Then afterwards, when
interpreting this, he says: “And as thou sawest the feet and the
toes, partly indeed of clay, and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be
divided, and there shall be in it a root of iron, as thou sawest iron
mixed with baked clay. And the toes were indeed the one part iron, but
the other part clay.”4679
The
ten toes, therefore, are these ten kings, among whom the kingdom shall be
partitioned, of whom some indeed shall be strong and active, or
energetic; others, again, shall be sluggish and useless, and shall not
agree; as also Daniel says: “Some part of the kingdom shall be
strong, and part shall be broken from it. As thou sawest the iron mixed
with the baked clay, there shall be minglings among the human race, but
no cohesion one with the other, just as iron cannot be welded on to
pottery ware.”4680
And since an end shall
take place, he says: “And in the days of these kings shall the God
of heaven raise up a kingdom which shall never decay, and His kingdom
shall not be left to another people. It shall break in pieces and shatter
all kingdoms, and shall itself be exalted for ever. As thou sawest that
the stone was cut without hands from the mountain, and brake in pieces
the baked clay, the iron, the brass, the silver, and the gold, God has
pointed out to the king what shall come to pass after these things; and
the dream is true, and the interpretation trustworthy.”4681
2. If therefore the great God showed future
things by Daniel, and confirmed them by His Son; and if Christ is the
stone which is cut out without hands, who shall destroy temporal
kingdoms, and introduce an eternal one, which is the resurrection of the
just; as he declares, “The God of heaven shall raise up a kingdom
which shall never be destroyed,”—let those thus confuted
come to their senses, who reject the Creator (Demiurgum), and do
not agree that the prophets were sent beforehand from the same Father
from whom also the Lord came, but who assert that prophecies originated
from diverse powers. For those things which have been predicted by the
Creator alike through all the prophets has Christ fulfilled in the end,
ministering to His Father’s will, and completing His dispensations
with regard to the human race. Let those persons, therefore, who
blaspheme the Creator, either by openly expressed words, such as the
disciples of Marcion, or by a perversion of the sense [of Scripture], as
those of Valentinus and all the Gnostics falsely so called, be recognised
as agents of Satan by all those who worship God; through whose agency
Satan now, and not before, has been seen to speak against God, even Him
who has prepared eternal fire for every kind of apostasy. For he did not
venture to blaspheme his Lord openly of himself; as also in the beginning
he led man astray through the instrumentality of the serpent, concealing
himself as it were from God. Truly has Justin remarked:4682
| 4682 The Greek text is here preserved by
Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iv. 18; but we are not told from what work
of Justin Martyr it is extracted. The work is now lost. An ancient catena
continues the Greek for several lines further. | That before the Lord’s
appearance Satan never dared to blaspheme God, inasmuch as he did not yet
know his own sentence, because it was contained in parables and
allegories; but that after the Lord’s appearance, when he had
clearly ascertained from the words of Christ and His apostles that
eternal fire has been prepared for him as he apostatized from God of his
own free-will, and likewise for all who unrepentant continue in the
apostasy, he now blasphemes, by means of such men, the Lord who brings
judgment [upon him] as being already condemned, and imputes the guilt of
his apostasy to his Maker, not to his own voluntary disposition. Just as
it is with those who break the laws, when punishment overtakes them: they
throw the blame upon those who frame the laws, but not upon themselves.
In like manner do those men, filled with a satanic spirit, bring
innumerable accusations against our Creator, who has both given to us the
spirit of life, and established a law adapted for all; and they will not
admit that the judgment of God is just. Wherefore also they set about
imagining some other Father who neither cares about nor exercises a
providence
over our affairs, nay, one who even approves of
all sins.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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