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| Of the Miracles Which God Has Condescended to Adhibit Through the Ministry of Angels, to His Promises for the Confirmation of the Faith of the Godly.
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Chapter 8.—Of the Miracles Which
God Has Condescended to Adhibit Through the Ministry of Angels, to
His Promises for the Confirmation of the Faith of the
Godly.
I should seem tedious were I to
recount all the ancient miracles, which were wrought in attestation
of God’s promises which He made to Abraham thousands of years
ago, that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be
blessed.400
For who
can but marvel that Abraham’s barren wife should have given birth
to a son at an age when not even a prolific woman could bear
children; or, again, that when Abraham sacrificed, a flame from
heaven should have run between the divided parts;401
| 401 Gen. xv. 17. In his
Retractations, ii. 43, Augustin says that he should not have
spoken of this as miraculous, because it was an appearance seen in
sleep. | or that the angels in human form,
whom he had hospitably entertained, and who had renewed God’s
promise of offspring, should also have predicted the destruction of
Sodom by fire from heaven;402
and that his nephew Lot should have
been rescued from Sodom by the angels as the fire was just
descending, while his wife, who looked back as she went, and was
immediately turned into salt, stood as a sacred beacon warning us
that no one who is being saved should long for what he is
leaving? How striking also were the wonders done by Moses to
rescue God’s people from the yoke of slavery in Egypt, when the
magi of the Pharaoh, that is, the king of Egypt, who tyrannized
over this people, were suffered to do some wonderful things that
they might be vanquished all the more signally! They did these
things by the magical arts and incantations to which the evil
spirits or demons are addicted; while Moses, having as much greater
power as he had right on his side, and having the aid of angels,
easily conquered them in the name of the Lord who made heaven and
earth. And, in fact, the magicians failed at the third plague;
whereas Moses, dealing out the miracles delegated to him, brought
ten plagues upon the land, so that the hard hearts of Pharaoh and
the Egyptians yielded, and the people were let go. But, quickly
repenting, and essaying to overtake the departing Hebrews, who had
crossed the sea on dry ground, they were covered and overwhelmed in
the returning waters. What shall I say of those frequent and
stupendous exhibitions of divine power, while the people were
conducted through the wilderness?—of the waters which could not
be drunk, but lost their bitterness, and quenched the thirsty, when
at God’s command a piece of wood was cast into them? of the manna
that descended from heaven to appease their hunger, and which begat
worms and putrefied when any one collected more than the appointed
quantity, and yet, though double was gathered on the day before the
Sabbath (it not being lawful to gather it on that day), remained
fresh? of the birds which filled the camp, and turned appetite into
satiety when they longed for flesh, which it seemed impossible to
supply to so vast a population? of the enemies who met them, and
opposed their passage with arms, and were defeated without the loss
of a single Hebrew, when Moses prayed with his hands extended in
the form of a cross? of the seditious persons who arose among
God’s people, and separated themselves from the divinely-ordered
community, and were swallowed up alive by the earth, a visible
token of an invisible punishment? of the rock struck with the rod,
and pouring out waters more than enough for all the host? of the
deadly serpents’ bites, sent in just punishment of sin, but
healed by looking at the lifted brazen serpent, so that not only
were the tormented people healed, but a symbol of the crucifixion
of death set before them in this destruction of death by death?
It was this serpent which was preserved in memory of this event,
and was afterwards worshipped by the mistaken people as an idol,
and was destroyed by the pious and God-fearing king Hezekiah, much
to his credit.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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