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| Connection of These Primeval Testimonies with Christ.
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Chapter V.—Connection
of These Primeval Testimonies with Christ.
Thus far for the testimony of things primordial,
and the sanction of our origin, and the prejudgment of the divine
institution, which of course is a law, not (merely) a memorial inasmuch
as, if it was “so done from the beginning,” we find
ourselves directed to the beginning by Christ: just as, in the
question of divorce, by saying that that had been permitted by Moses on
account of their hard-heartedness but from the beginning it had not
been so, He doubtless recalls to “the beginning” the (law
of) the individuity of marriage. And accordingly, those whom God
“from the beginning” conjoined, “two into one
flesh,” man shall not at the present day separate.602
The apostle, too, writing to the
Ephesians, says that God “had proposed in Himself, at the
dispensation of the fulfilment of the times, to recall to the
head” (that is, to the beginning) “things universal in
Christ, which are above the heavens and above the earth in
Him.”603
So, too, the
two letters of Greece, the first and the last, the Lord assumes to
Himself, as figures of the beginning and end! which concur in
Himself: so that, just as Alpha rolls on till it reaches Omega,
and again Omega rolls back till it reaches Alpha, in the same way He
might show that in Himself is both the downward course of the beginning
on to the end, and the backward course of the end up to the beginning;
so that every economy, ending in Him through whom it
began,—through the Word of God, that is, who was made
flesh,604
—may have an end correspondent to its
beginning. And so truly in Christ are all things recalled to
“the beginning,” that even faith returns from circumcision
to the integrity of that (original) flesh, as “it was from the
beginning;” and freedom of meats and abstinence from blood alone,
as “it was from the beginning;” and the individuality of
marriage, as “it was from the beginning;” and the
restriction of divorce, which was not “from the
beginning;” and lastly, the whole man into Paradise, where he was
“from the beginning.” Why, then, ought He not to
restore Adam thither at least as a monogamist, who cannot present him
in so entire perfection as he was when dismissed thence?
Accordingly, so far as pertains to the restitution of the beginning,
the logic both of the dispensation you live under, and of your hope,
exact this from you, that what was “from the beginning”
(should be) in accordance with “the beginning;” which
(beginning) you find counted in Adam, and recounted in Noah. Make
your election, in which of the twain you account your
“beginning.” In both, the censorial power of monogamy
claims you for itself. But again: if the beginning passes
on to the end (as Alpha to Omega), as the end passes back to the
beginning (as Omega to Alpha), and thus our origin is transferred to
Christ, the animal to the spiritual—inasmuch as “(that was)
not first which is spiritual, but (that) which (is) animal; then what
(is) spiritual,”605
—let us, in like
manner (as before), see whether you owe this very (same) thing to this
second origin also: whether the last Adam also meet you in the
selfsame form as the first; since the last Adam (that is, Christ) was
entirely unwedded, as was even the first Adam before his exile.
But, presenting to your weakness the gift of the example of His own
flesh, the more perfect Adam—that is, Christ, more perfect on
this account as well (as on others), that He was more entirely
pure—stands before you, if you are willing (to copy Him), as a
voluntary celibate in the flesh. If, however, you are unequal (to
that perfection), He stands before you a monogamist in spirit, having
one Church as His spouse, according to the figure of Adam and of Eve,
which (figure) the apostle interprets of that great sacrament of Christ
and the Church, (teaching that), through the spiritual, it was
analogous to the carnal monogamy. You see, therefore, after what
manner, renewing your origin even in Christ, you cannot trace down that
(origin) without the profession of monogamy; unless, (that is), you be
in flesh what He is in spirit; albeit withal, what He was in flesh, you
equally ought to have been.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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