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| Of the Jewish Priesthood and Kingdom, Which, Although Promised to Be Established for Ever, Did Not Continue; So that Other Things are to Be Understood to Which Eternity is Assured.
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Chapter 6.—Of the Jewish
Priesthood and Kingdom, Which, Although Promised to Be Established
for Ever, Did Not Continue; So that Other Things are to Be
Understood to Which Eternity is Assured.
While, therefore, these things now
shine forth as clearly as they were loftily foretold, still some
one may not vainly be moved to ask, How can we be confident that
all things are to come to pass which are predicted in these books
as about to come, if this very thing which is there divinely
spoken, “Thine house and thy father’s house shall walk before
me for ever,” could not have effect? For we see that priesthood
has been changed; and there can be no hope that what was promised
to that house may some time be fulfilled, because that which
succeeds on its being rejected and changed is rather predicted as
eternal. He who says this does not yet understand, or does not
recollect, that this very priesthood after the order of Aaron was
appointed as the shadow of a future eternal priesthood; and
therefore, when eternity is promised to it, it is not promised to
the mere shadow and figure, but to what is shadowed forth and
prefigured by it. But lest it should be thought the shadow itself
was to remain, therefore its mutation also behoved to be
foretold.
In this way, too, the kingdom of Saul himself, who
certainly was reprobated and rejected, was the shadow of a kingdom
yet to come which should remain to eternity. For, indeed, the oil
with which he was anointed, and from that chrism he is called
Christ, is to be taken in a mystical sense, and is to be understood
as a great mystery; which David himself venerated so much in him,
that he trembled with smitten heart when, being hid in a dark cave,
which Saul also entered when pressed by the necessity of nature, he
had come secretly behind him and cut off a small piece of his robe,
that he might be able to prove how he had spared him when he could
have killed him, and might thus remove from his mind the suspicion
through which he had vehemently persecuted the holy David, thinking
him his enemy. Therefore he was much afraid lest he should be
accused of violating so great a mystery in Saul, because he had
thus meddled even his clothes. For thus it is written: “And
David’s heart smote him because he had taken away the skirt of
his cloak.”1028
But to
the men with him, who advised him to destroy Saul thus delivered up
into his hands, he saith, “The Lord forbid that I should do this
thing to my lord, the Lord’s christ, to lay my hand upon him,
because he is the Lord’s christ.” Therefore he showed so
great reverence to this shadow of what was to come, not for its own
sake, but for the sake of what it prefigured. Whence also that
which Samuel says to Saul, “Since thou hast not kept my
commandment which the Lord commanded thee, whereas now the Lord
would have prepared thy kingdom over Israel for ever, yet now thy
kingdom shall not continue for thee; and the Lord will seek Him a
man after His own heart, and the Lord will command him to be prince
over His people, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord
commanded thee,”1029
is not to be taken as if God had
settled that Saul himself should reign for ever, and afterwards, on
his sinning, would not keep this promise; nor was He ignorant that
he would sin, but He had established his kingdom that it might be a
figure of the eternal kingdom. Therefore he added, “Yet now thy
kingdom shall not continue for thee.” Therefore what it
signified has stood and shall stand; but it shall not stand for
this man, because he himself was not to reign for ever, nor his
offspring; so that at least that word “for ever” might seem to
be fulfilled through his posterity one to another. “And the
Lord,” he saith, “will seek Him a man,” meaning either David
or the Mediator of the New Testament,1030
who was figured in the chrism with
which David also and his offspring was anointed. But it is not as
if He knew not where he was that God thus seeks Him a man, but,
speaking through a man, He speaks as a man, and in this sense seeks
us. For not only to God the Father, but also to His
Only-begotten, who came to seek what was lost,1031
we had been known already even so
far as to be chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.1032
“He
will seek Him” therefore means, He will have His own (just as if
He had said, Whom He already has known to be His own He will show
to others to be His friend). Whence in Latin this word
(quærit) receives a preposition and becomes acquirit
(acquires), the meaning of which is plain enough; although even
without the addition of the preposition quærere is
understood as acquirere, whence gains are called
quæstus.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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