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| Chapter XXIV. How the lands from which the Canaanites were expelled, had been assigned to the seed of Shem.
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Chapter XXIV.
How the lands from which the Canaanites were expelled,
had been assigned to the seed of Shem.
For, as an ancient
tradition tells us,1359
| 1359 The
“ancient tradition” to which Cassian here alludes is given
in the Clementine Recognitions I. xxix., xxx.; and in Epiphanius
“Heresies,” c. lxvi. § 83, sq., where it is
given as an answer to the Manichæan objection against the
cruelty and injustice of the extermination of the Canaanites by the
Israelites. | these same lands
of the Canaanites into which the children of Israel were brought, had
been formerly allotted to the children of Shem at the division of the
world, and afterward the descendants of Ham wickedly invading them with
force and violence took possession of them. And in this the righteous
judgment of God is shown, as He expelled from the land of others these
who had wrongfully taken possession of them, and restored to those
others the ancient property of their fathers which had been assigned to
their ancestors at the division of the world. And we can perfectly well
see that this figure holds good in our own case. For by nature
God’s will assigned the possession of our heart not to vices but
to virtues, which, after the fall of Adam were driven out from their
own country by the sins which grew up, i.e., by the Canaanites; and so
when by God’s grace they are by our efforts and labour restored
again to it, we may hold that they have not occupied the territory of
another, but rather have recovered their own
country.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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