Anf-01 ix.iv.xix Pg 33
Matt. v. 39.
cheek, if He did not Himself before us in reality suffer the same; and as He misled them by seeming to them what He was not, so does He also mislead us, by exhorting us to endure what He did not endure Himself. [In that case] we shall be even above the Master, because we suffer and sustain what our Master never bore or endured. But as our Lord is alone truly Master, so the Son of God is truly good and patient, the Word of God the Father having been made the Son of man. For He fought and conquered; for He was man contending for the fathers,3659 3659 “Pro patribus, ἀντὶ τῶν πατρῶν. The reader will here observe the clear statement of the doctrine of atonement, whereby alone sin is done away.”—Harvey.
and through obedience doing away with disobedience completely: for He bound the strong man,3660 3660
Anf-01 ix.vi.xxxv Pg 11
Matt. v. 39.
then the prophets have not spoken these things of any other person, but of Him who effected them. This person is our Lord, and in Him is that declaration borne out; since it is He Himself who has made the plough, and introduced the pruning-hook, that is, the first semination of man, which was the creation exhibited in Adam,4348 4348 Book i. p. 327, this volume.
and the gathering in of the produce in the last times by the Word; and, for this reason, since He joined the beginning to the end, and is the Lord of both, He has finally displayed the plough, in that the wood has been joined on to the iron, and has thus cleansed His land; because the Word, having been firmly united to flesh, and in its mechanism fixed with pins,4349 4349 This is following Harvey’s conjectural emendation of the text, viz., “taleis” for “talis.” He considers the pins here as symbolical of the nails by which our Lord was fastened to the cross. The whole passage is almost hopelessly obscure, though the general meaning may be guessed.
