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| Chapter VIII.—The True Doctrine is to Be Sought in the Prophets.
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Chapter VIII.—The True Doctrine is to Be Sought in the Prophets.
It is now time, as we have despatched in order the
other points, to go to the prophetic Scriptures; for the oracles present
us with the appliances necessary for the attainment of piety,
and so establish the truth. The
divine Scriptures and institutions of wisdom form the short road to
salvation. Devoid of embellishment, of outward beauty of diction,
of wordiness and seductiveness, they raise up humanity strangled by
wickedness, teaching men to despise the casualties of life; and with
one and the same voice remedying many evils, they at once dissuade
us from pernicious deceit, and clearly exhort us to the attainment of
the salvation set before us. Let the Sibyl930
| 930 [Note her remarkable accord with inspiration,
clearly distinguishing between such and the oracles of God. But see,
supra, p. 132 and p. 145.] | prophetess, then, be the
first to sing to us the song of salvation:—
“So He is all sure and unerring:
Come, follow no longer darkness and gloom;
See, the sun’s sweet-glancing light shines gloriously.
Know, and lay up wisdom in your hearts:
There is one God, who sends rains, and winds, and earthquakes,
Thunderbolts, famines, plagues, and dismal sorrows,
And snows and ice. But why detail particulars?
He reigns over heaven, He rules earth,
He truly is;”—
where, in remarkable accordance with
inspiration931
| 931 [Having shown what
truth there is to be found in heathen poets, he ascends to the Sibyl,
and thus comes to the prophets; showing them how to climb upward in
this way, and cleverly inducing them to make the best use of their own
prophets and poets, by following them to the sources of their noblest
ideas.] | she compares delusion to darkness, and the knowledge
of God to the sun and light, and subjecting both to comparison, shows
the choice we ought to make. For falsehood is not dissipated by the bare
presentation of the truth, but by the practical improvement of the truth
it is ejected and put to flight.
Jeremiah the prophet, gifted with consummate
wisdom,932
or rather the Holy Spirit
in Jeremiah, exhibits God. “Am I a God at hand,” he says,
“and not a God afar off? Shall a man do ought in secret, and I not
see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth? Saith the Lord.”933
And again by Isaiah, “Who shall measure
heaven with a span, and the whole earth with his hand?”934
Behold
God’s greatness, and be filled with amazement. Let us worship
Him of whom the prophet says, “Before Thy face the hills shall
melt, as wax melteth before the fire!”935
This, says he, is the God
“whose throne is heaven, and His footstool the earth; and if He
open heaven, quaking will seize thee.”936
Will you hear, too, what this
prophet says of idols? “And they shall be made a spectacle of in
the face of the sun, and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of
heaven and the wild beasts of the earth; and they shall putrefy before
the sun and the moon, which they have loved and served; and their city
shall be burned down.”937
He says, too, that the elements
and the world shall be destroyed. “The earth,” he says,
“shall grow old, and the heaven shall pass away; but the word of
the Lord endureth for ever.” What, then, when again God wishes to
show Himself by Moses: “Behold ye, behold ye, that I Am, and there is no other God beside Me. I
will kill, and I will make to live; I will strike, and I will heal;
and there is none who shall deliver out of My hands.”938
But do
you wish to hear another seer? You have the whole prophetic choir, the
associates of Moses. What the Holy Spirit says by Hosea, I will not shrink
from quoting: “Lo, I am He that appointeth the thunder, and createth
spirit; and His hands have established the host of heaven.”939
And once
more by Isaiah. And this utterance I will repeat: “I am,” he
says, “I am the Lord;
I who speak righteousness, announce truth. Gather yourselves
together, and come. Take counsel together, ye that are saved from
the nations. They have not known, they who set up the block of wood,
their carved work, and pray to gods who will not save them.”940
Then
proceeding: “I am God, and there is not beside Me a just God, and
a Saviour: there is none except Me. Turn to Me, and ye will be saved,
ye that are from the end of the earth. I am God, and there is no other;
by Myself I swear.”941
But against the worshippers of idols he
is exasperated, saying, “To whom will ye liken the Lord, or to what likeness will ye compare
Him? Has not the artificer made the image, or the goldsmith melted
the gold and plated it with gold?”942
—and so on. Be not
therefore idolaters, but even now beware of the threatenings; “for
the graven images and the works of men’s hands shall wail, or rather
they that trust in them,”943
for matter is devoid of sensation. Once more
he says, “The Lord
will shake the cities that are inhabited, and grasp the world in His
hand like a nest.”944
Why repeat to you the mysteries of wisdom,
and sayings from the writings of the son of the Hebrews, the master
of wisdom? “The Lord
created me the beginning of His ways, in order to His works.”945
And,
“The Lord giveth wisdom,
and from His face proceed knowledge and understanding.”946
“How long wilt thou lie in bed, O sluggard; and when wilt thou be
aroused from sleep?”947
“but if thou show thyself no
sluggard, as a fountain thy
harvest shall come,”948
the “Word of the Father, the benign
light, the Lord that bringeth light,
faith to all, and salvation.”949
For “the Lord who created the earth by
His power,” as Jeremiah says, “has raised up the world
by His wisdom;”950
for wisdom, which is His word, raises us up
to the truth, who have fallen prostrate before idols, and is itself
the first resurrection from our fall. Whence Moses, the man of God,
dissuading from all idolatry, beautifully exclaims, “Hear, O Israel,
the Lord thy God is one Lord; and thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shall thou
serve.”951
“Now therefore be wise, O men,” according
to that blessed psalmist David; “lay hold on instruction, lest
the Lord be angry, and ye perish from the way of righteousness, when
His wrath has quickly kindled. Blessed are all they who put their trust
in Him.”952
But already the Lord, in His surpassing pity, has inspired
the song of salvation, sounding like a battle march, “Sons of
men, how long will ye be slow of heart? Why do you love vanity, and
seek after a lie?”953
What, then, is the vanity, and what the lie? The
holy apostle of the Lord, reprehending the Greeks, will show thee:
“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as
God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations,
and changed the glory of God into the likeness of corruptible man, and
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.”954
And verily this is the God who “in the beginning made the heaven
and the earth.”955
But you do not know God, and worship the heaven,
and how shall you escape the guilt of impiety? Hear again the prophet
speaking: “The sun, shall suffer eclipse, and the heaven be
darkened; but the Almighty shall shine for ever: while the powers of
the heavens shall be shaken, and the heavens stretched out and drawn
together shall be rolled as a parchment-skin (for these are the prophetic
expressions), and the earth shall flee away from before the face of the
Lord.”956
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