Chapter 19.—21. What, then, does he mean by quoting in his letter the words with which our Lord addressed the Jews: "Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge?"1951
For if by the
wise men and the
scribes and the
prophets they would have themselves be understood, while we were as it were the persecutors of the
prophets and
wise men, why are they
unwilling to speak with us, seeing they are sent to us? For, indeed, if the man who wrote that
epistle which we are at this present moment answering, were to be pressed by us to acknowledge it as his own, stamping its authenticity with his signature, I
question much whether he would do it, so
thoroughly afraid are they of our possessing any words of theirs. For when we were anxious by some means or other to procure the latter part of this same letter, because those from whom we obtained it were unable to describe the whole of it, no one who was asked for it was willing to give it to us, so soon as they knew that we were making a reply to the portion which we had. Therefore, when they read how the
Lord says to the
prophet, "
Cry aloud, spare not, and
write their
sins with my pen,"
1952
these men who are sent to us as
prophets have no
fears on this score, but take every precaution that their crying may not be heard by us: which they certainly would not
fear if what they spoke of us were true. But their apprehension is not groundless, as it is written in the Psalm, "The mouth of them that speak
lies shall be stopped."
1953
For if the reason that they do not receive our
baptism be that we are a generation of
vipers—to use the expression in his
epistle—why did they receive the
baptism of the followers of Maximianus, of whom their
Council speaks in the following terms: "Because the enfolding of a
poisoned womb has long concealed the baneful
offspring of a
viper’s
seed, and the moist concretions of conceived
iniquity have by slow
heat flowed forth into the members of
serpents"? Is it not
therefore of themselves also that it is said in the same
Council, "The
poison of
asps is under their
lips, their mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness, their
feet are swift to shed
blood; destruction and unhappiness is in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known"?
1954
| 1954 Ps. xiv. 5-7, LXX. and Hieron., and probably N. Af. version.
|
And yet they now hold these men themselves in undiminished honor, and receive within their body those whom these men had baptized without.
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