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| Whether the Truth of This Promised Peace Can Be Ascribed to Those Times Passed Away Under Solomon.
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Chapter 13.—Whether the Truth of
This Promised Peace Can Be Ascribed to Those Times Passed Away
Under Solomon.
Whoever hopes for this so great
good in this world, and in this earth, his wisdom is but folly.
Can any one think it was fulfilled in the peace of Solomon’s
reign? Scripture certainly commends that peace with excellent
praise as a shadow of that which is to come. But this opinion is
to be vigilantly opposed, since after it is said, “And the son of
iniquity shall not humble him any more,” it is immediately added,
“as from the beginning, from the days in which I appointed judges
over my people Israel.”1078
For the judges were appointed
over that people from the time when they received the land of
promise, before kings had begun to be there. And certainly the
son of iniquity, that is, the foreign enemy, humbled him through
periods of time in which we read that peace alternated with wars;
and in that period longer times of peace are found than Solomon
had, who reigned forty years. For under that judge who is called
Ehud there were eighty years of peace.1079
Be it far from us, therefore,
that we should believe the times of Solomon are predicted in this
promise, much less indeed those of any other king whatever. For
none other of them reigned in such great peace as he; nor did that
nation ever at all hold that kingdom so as to have no anxiety lest
it should be subdued by enemies: for in the very great mutability
of human affairs such great security is never given to any people,
that it should not dread invasions hostile to this life.
Therefore the place of this promised peaceful and secure habitation
is eternal, and of right belongs eternally to Jerusalem the free
mother, where the genuine people of Israel shall be: for this
name is interpreted “Seeing God;” in the desire of which reward
a pious life is to be led through faith in this miserable
pilgrimage.1080
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