Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| - HELP 
8. For that both history of
the Old Testament, and ætiology, and analogy are found in the New
Testament, has been, as I think, sufficiently proved: it remains to
show this of allegory. Our Redeemer Himself in the Gospel uses
allegory out of the Old Testament. “This generation,” saith He,
“seeketh a sign, and there shall not be given it save the sign of
Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in
the whale’s belly, so also shall the Son of Man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth.”1708
For why should I speak of the
Apostle Paul, who in his first Epistle to the Corinthians shows
that even the very history of the Exodus was an allegory of the
future Christian People. “But I would not that ye should be
ignorant, brethren, how that all our fathers were under the cloud,
and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized into Moses,
in the cloud, and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual
meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of
the spiritual Rock that followed with them; and that Rock was
Christ. But in the more part of them God was not well pleased: for
they were overthrown in the wilderness. But these things were
figures of us,1709
| 1709 Figuræ nostra
τὐποι
ἠμῶν Gr. in figura facta
sunt nostri. Vulg. | that we be
not lustful of evil things, as they also lusted. Neither let us
worship idols, as certain of them; as it is written, The people sat
down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit
fornication, as certain of them committed, and fell in one day
three and twenty thousand men. Neither let us tempt Christ, as
certain of them tempted, and perished of serpents. Neither murmur
we, as certain of them murmured, and perished of the destroyer. But
all these things happened unto them in a figure.1710
But they were written for our
admonition, upon whom the ends of the world have come.”1711
There is
also in the Apostle a certain allegory, which indeed greatly
relates to the cause in hand, for this reason that they themselves
are wont to bring it forward, and make a display of it in
disputing. For the same Paul says to the Galatians, “For it is
written, that Abraham had two sons, one of a bond-maid, and one of
a free woman. But he who was of the bond-maid was born after the
flesh: but he who was of the free woman, by promise: which things
were spoken by way of allegory.1712
For these are the two Testaments,
one of Mount Sinai gendering unto bondage, which is Agar: for Sinai
is a mount in Arabia, which bordereth1713
upon that Jerusalem which now is,
and is in bondage with her children. But that Jerusalem which is
above is free, which is the mother of us all.”1714
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
