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| Jerome, under the name of “another,” gives his own views.
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26. So far he has set forth a single exposition of the
passage; but on whose authority he wishes us to receive this
interpretation he has not made clear. What he has done is to make void
this first interpretation by what comes after: for he goes on:
“But there is another, who tries to show that God is just.”
He therefore points out that by that first exposition the justice of
God is not vindicated, which of course is contrary to the faith: and he
goes on through the mouth of this ‘other,’ whose assertions
he evidently wishes to exhibit as being what is everywhere held for
catholic and indubitable, to give a testimony by which he will, as he
asserts, seek to show that God is just. Let us see then what this
‘other man’ says, who proclaims the justice of
God.
“Another man,” he
says, “who seeks to vindicate the justice of God, argues that it
is not according to his own pre-judgment and knowledge, but according
to the merit of the elect that God’s choice of men is determined;
and he says that, before the creation of the visible world, of sky and
earth and seas and all that they contain, there existed other invisible
creatures, among which also were souls; and that these souls, for
reasons known to God alone, were cast down2866
| 2866 καταβολή
“foundation,” means literally
“casting down.” | into this vale of tears, this place of
our mournful pilgrimage, and that this is shewn by the prayer uttered
by a holy man of old who, having his habitation fixed here, yet longed
to return to his original abode: “Woe is me that my sojourning is
prolonged, that I have my habitation among the inhabitants of
Kedar,”2867
“my soul has long been a
pilgrim,” and again “O wretched man that I am, who will
deliver me from the body of this death?”2868
and in another place “It is
better to return and be with Christ,”2869
and elsewhere, “Before I was
brought low, I sinned;”2870
and other
words of a like character.”
This relates, they say to the
souls’ condition before they were cast down into the
world. The reader of this will be apt to say, Master, you seem to tell
us, yet do not really tell us, who these men are who say this, that the
souls of men existed before they were cast down into the world. Then he
will reply, “Was I not right in saying that you were blind, and
no better than a mole? Did I not say before, that they are those who
assert that God is just,—by which, if you had any sense at all,
you would understand that I mean myself: for I am not such a heretic as
not to include myself among those who vindicate the justice of God,
which indeed all must do who have the least tincture of good
sense.” Then they will reply, “Tell us, then, master, tell
us, what it is that these men say, and you among them? We understand
that you say that before the souls were cast down into the world, and
before the world, which was made up of souls, had been cast down
together with its inhabitants into the abyss, God chose Paul and those
like him, who were holy and undefiled. But if men are chosen, they are
chosen out of a great number; there must be many in a worse condition
out of whom the election is made. However, just as in the Babylonian
captivity, when Nebuchadnezzar carried away the people into
Chaldæa, Ezekiel and Daniel and the Three Children, and Haggai and
Zechariah were sent with them, not because they deserved to become
captives, but that they might be a comfort to those who were carried
away; so also, in that ‘casting down’ of the world, those
who had been chosen by God before the world was, were sent to instruct
and train the sinful souls, so that these, through their preaching,
might return to the place from which they had fallen; and this is what
is meant by the words of the eighty-ninth Psalm:2871
“Lord thou hast been our refuge
in generation and in offspring, before the mountains were established,
or the earth and the world were made;” that is to say, that
before the world was made, and a beginning was made of the generation
of all things, God was a refuge to his saints.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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