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| Prophecy Sets Forth Two Different Conditions of Christ, One Lowly, the Other Majestic. This Fact Points to Two Advents of Christ.
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Chapter VII.—Prophecy
Sets Forth Two Different Conditions of Christ, One Lowly, the Other
Majestic. This Fact Points to Two Advents of Christ.
Our heretic will now have the fullest opportunity
of learning the clue3180
of his errors along
with the Jew himself, from whom he has borrowed his guidance in this
discussion. Since, however, the blind leads the blind, they fall into
the ditch together. We affirm that, as there are two conditions
demonstrated by the prophets to belong to Christ, so these presignified
the same number of advents; one, and that the first, was to be in
lowliness,3181
when He had to be
led as a sheep to be slain as a victim, and to be as a lamb dumb before
the shearer, not opening His mouth, and not fair to look upon.3182
| 3182 A reference to, rather
than quotation from, Isa.
liii. 7. | For, says (the prophet), we have announced
concerning Him: “He is like a tender plant,3183
| 3183 Sicut puerulus,
“like a little boy,” or, “a sorry slave.” | like a root out of a thirsty ground; He hath
no form nor comeliness; and we beheld Him, and He was without
beauty: His form was disfigured;”3184
“marred more than the sons of men; a man stricken with sorrows,
and knowing how to bear our infirmity;”3185
“placed by the Father as a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence;”3186
“made by Him
a little lower than the angels;”3187
declaring Himself to be “a worm and not a man, a reproach of men,
and despised of the people.”3188
Now these
signs of degradation quite suit His first coming, just as the tokens of
His majesty do His second advent, when He shall no longer remain
“a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence,” but after His
rejection become “the chief corner-stone,” accepted and
elevated to the top place3189
of the temple, even
His church, being that very stone in Daniel, cut out of the mountain,
which was to smite and crush the image of the secular kingdom.3190
Of this advent the same prophet says:
“Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven,
and came to the Ancient of days; and they brought Him before Him, and
there was given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people,
nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion, which shall not pass away; and His kingdom that which shall
not be destroyed.”3191
Then indeed He
shall have both a glorious form, and an unsullied beauty above the sons
of men. “Thou art fairer,” says (the Psalmist), “than
the children of men; grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore God hath
blessed Thee for ever. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most mighty,
with Thy glory and Thy majesty.”3192
For the Father, after making Him a little lower than the angels,
“will crown Him with glory and honour, and put all things under
His feet.”3193
“Then
shall they look on Him whom
they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, tribe after
tribe;”3194
because, no doubt,
they once refused to acknowledge Him in the lowliness of His human
condition. He is even a man, says Jeremiah, and who shall recognise
Him. Therefore, asks Isaiah, “who shall declare His
generation?”3195
So also in
Zechariah, Christ Jesus, the true High Priest of the Father, in the
person of Joshua, nay, in the very mystery of His name,3196
| 3196 Joshua, i.e.,
Jesus. | is portrayed in a twofold dress with
reference to both His advents. At first He is clad in sordid garments,
that is to say, in the lowliness of suffering and mortal flesh: then
the devil resisted Him, as the instigator of the traitor Judas, not to
mention his tempting Him after His baptism: afterwards He was stripped
of His first filthy raiment, and adorned with the priestly
robe3197
and mitre, and a pure diadem;3198
in other words, with the glory and honour of
His second advent.3199
If I may offer,
moreover, an interpretation of the two goats which were presented on
“the great day of atonement,”3200
do
they not also figure the two natures of Christ? They were of like size,
and very similar in appearance, owing to the Lord’s identity of
aspect; because He is not to come in any other form, having to be
recognised by those by whom He was also wounded and pierced. One of
these goats was bound3201
with
scarlet,3202
and driven by the
people out of the camp3203
into the
wilderness,3204
amid cursing, and
spitting, and pulling, and piercing,3205
| 3205 This treatment
of the scape-goat was partly ceremonial, partly disorderly. The Mischna
(Yoma vi. 4–6) mentions the scarlet ribbon which was bound
round the animal’s head between the horns, and the
“pulling” (rather plucking out of its hair); but this
latter was an indignity practised by scoffers and guarded against by
Jews. Tertullian repeats the whole of this passage, Adv. Jud.
xiv. Similar use is made of the type of the scape-goat by other
fathers, as Justin Martyr (Dial. cum Tryph.) and Cyril of Alex.
(Epist. ad Acacium). In this book ix. Against Julian, he
expressly says: “Christ was described by the two goats,—as
dying for us in the flesh, and then (as shown by the scape-goat)
overcoming death in His divine nature.” See
Tertullian’s passages illustrated fully in Rabbi Chiga,
Addit. ad Cod. de die Expiat. (in Ugolini, Thes. i.
88). | being thus
marked with all the signs of the Lord’s own passion; while the
other, by being offered up for sins, and given to the priests of the
temple for meat, afforded proofs of His second appearance, when (after
all sins have been expiated) the priests of the spiritual temple, that
is, the church, are to enjoy the flesh, as it were,3206
| 3206 Quasi visceratione.
[See Kaye’s important comment, p. 426.] | of the Lord’s own grace, whilst the
residue go away from salvation without tasting it.3207
Since, therefore, the first advent was
prophetically declared both as most obscure in its types, and as
deformed with every kind of indignity, but the second as glorious and
altogether worthy of God, they would on this very account, while
confining their regards to that which they were easily able both to
understand and to believe, even the second advent, be not undeservedly
deceived respecting the more obscure, and, at any rate, the more lowly
first coming. Accordingly, to this day they deny that their
Christ has come, because He has not appeared in majesty, while they
ignore the fact that He was to come also in
lowliness.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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