Anf-03 v.iv.v.xxxiv Pg 28
Mal. ii. 15.
Thus you have Christ following spontaneously the tracks of the Creator everywhere, both in permitting divorce and in forbidding it. You find Him also protecting marriage, in whatever direction you try to escape. He prohibits divorce when He will have the marriage inviolable; He permits divorce when the marriage is spotted with unfaithfulness. You should blush when you refuse to unite those whom even your Christ has united; and repeat the blush when you disunite them without the good reason why your Christ would have them separated. I have4829 4829 Debeo.
now to show whence the Lord derived this decision4830 4830 Sententiam.
of His, and to what end He directed it. It will thus become more fully evident that His object was not the abolition of the Mosaic ordinance4831 4831 Literally, “Moses.”
by any suddenly devised proposal of divorce; because it was not suddenly proposed, but had its root in the previously mentioned John. For John reproved Herod, because he had illegally married the wife of his deceased brother, who had a daughter by her (a union which the law permitted only on the one occasion of the brother dying childless,4832 4832 Illiberis. [N.B. He supposes Philip to have been dead.]
when it even prescribed such a marriage, in order that by his own brother, and from his own wife,4833 4833 Costa: literally, “rib” or “side.”
seed might be reckoned to the deceased husband),4834 4834
Anf-03 v.iv.v.xxiii Pg 39
Num. vi. 6, 7.
Now it was, I suppose, for the Nazarite and the priestly office that He intended this man whom He had been inspiring4412 4412 Imbuerat.
to preach the kingdom of God. Or else, if it be not so, he must be pronounced impious enough who, without the intervention of any precept of the law, commanded that burials of parents should be neglected by their sons. When, indeed, in the third case before us, (Christ) forbids the man “to look back” who wanted first “to bid his family farewell,” He only follows out the rule4413 4413 Sectam.
of the Creator. For this (retrospection) He had been against their making, whom He had rescued out of Sodom.4414 4414
Anf-03 v.iv.v.xxiii Pg 39
Num. vi. 6, 7.
Now it was, I suppose, for the Nazarite and the priestly office that He intended this man whom He had been inspiring4412 4412 Imbuerat.
to preach the kingdom of God. Or else, if it be not so, he must be pronounced impious enough who, without the intervention of any precept of the law, commanded that burials of parents should be neglected by their sons. When, indeed, in the third case before us, (Christ) forbids the man “to look back” who wanted first “to bid his family farewell,” He only follows out the rule4413 4413 Sectam.
of the Creator. For this (retrospection) He had been against their making, whom He had rescued out of Sodom.4414 4414
Anf-02 vi.iv.i.i Pg 25.1
Anf-03 v.iv.v.xxiii Pg 38
Lev. xxi. 1, according to our author’s reading.
; as well as that in Numbers, which relates to the (Nazarite) vow of separation; for there he who devotes himself to God, among other things, is bidden “not to come at any dead body,” not even of his father, or his mother, or his brother.4411 4411
Anf-01 ix.vi.xxix Pg 11
Num. xiv. 30.
and innocent children,4206 4206
Anf-01 viii.iv.cxxxii Pg 4
See 1 Sam. v.
and a terrible and incurable malady had broken out among them, they resolved to place it on a cart to which they yoked cows that had recently calved, for the purpose of ascertaining by trial whether or not they had been plagued by God’s power on account of the ark, and if God wished it to be taken back to the place from which it had been carried away. And when they had done this, the cows, led by no man, went not to the place whence the ark had been taken, but to the fields of a certain man whose name was Oshea, the same as his whose name was altered to Jesus (Joshua), as has been previously mentioned, who also led the people into the land and meted it out to them: and when the cows had come into these fields they remained there, showing to you thereby that they were guided by the name of power;2465 2465
Anf-01 viii.iv.cxxxii Pg 4
See 1 Sam. v.
and a terrible and incurable malady had broken out among them, they resolved to place it on a cart to which they yoked cows that had recently calved, for the purpose of ascertaining by trial whether or not they had been plagued by God’s power on account of the ark, and if God wished it to be taken back to the place from which it had been carried away. And when they had done this, the cows, led by no man, went not to the place whence the ark had been taken, but to the fields of a certain man whose name was Oshea, the same as his whose name was altered to Jesus (Joshua), as has been previously mentioned, who also led the people into the land and meted it out to them: and when the cows had come into these fields they remained there, showing to you thereby that they were guided by the name of power;2465 2465
Anf-02 vi.iii.ii.viii Pg 6.1
Anf-02 vi.iv.vi.xvi Pg 48.1
Anf-01 ix.vi.vi Pg 19
Gen. xiv. 22.
All these truths, however, do those holding perverse opinions endeavour to overthrow, because of one passage, which they certainly do not understand correctly.
