Anf-01 v.vii.iii Pg 11
Rev. i. 7.
and when they recognise Him, “mourn for themselves?”999 999
Anf-03 iv.ix.xiv Pg 15
See Zech. xii. 10; 12 (where the LXX., as we have it, differs widely from our Eng. ver. in ver. 10); Rev. i. 7.
of course because in days bygone they did not know Him when conditioned in the humility of human estate. Jeremiah says: “He is a human being, and who will learn to know Him?”1458 1458
Anf-03 v.viii.li Pg 7
Zech. xii. 10; John xix. 37; Rev. i. 7.
Designated, as He is, “the Mediator7665 7665
Anf-03 v.xi.v Pg 3
See Rev. i. 7; xxi. 6; xxii. 13.
In fact, they say that Jesus Christ descended,8394 8394 Denique Jesum Christum descendisse. So Oehler, who does not notice any conjectural emendation, or various reading, of the words. If correct, his reading would refer to the views of a twofold Jesus Christ—a real and a phantasmal one—held by docetic Gnostics, or to such views as Valentine’s, in whose system, so far as it is ascertainable from the confused and discrepant account of it, there would appear to have been one Æon called Christ, another called Jesus, and a human person called Jesus and Christ, with whom the true Jesus associated Himself. Some such jumble of ideas the two heretics now under review would seem to have held, if Oehler’s be the true reading. But the difficulties are somewhat lessened if we accept the very simple emendation which naturally suggests itself, and which, I see, Semler has proposed and Routh inclines to receive, “in Jesum Christum descendisse,” i.e. “that Christ descended on Jesus.”
that is, that the dove came down on Jesus;8395 8395
Anf-03 iv.vi.xv Pg 6
Rev. x. 1.
is adorned with an encircling rainbow (as it were in its fair colours)—a celestial meadow. In like manner, the elders sit crowned around, crowned too with a crown of gold, and the Son of Man Himself flashes out above the clouds. If such are the appearances in the vision of the seer, of what sort will be the realities in the actual manifestation? Look at those crowns. Inhale those odours. Why condemn you to a little chaplet, or a twisted headband, the brow which has been destined for a diadem? For Christ Jesus has made us even kings to God and His Father. What have you in common with the flower which is to die? You have a flower in the Branch of Jesse, upon which the grace of the Divine Spirit in all its fulness rested—a flower undefiled, unfading, everlasting, by choosing which the good soldier, too, has got promotion in the heavenly ranks. Blush, ye fellow-soldiers of his, henceforth not to be condemned even by him, but by some soldier of Mithras, who, at his initiation in the gloomy cavern, in the camp, it may well be said, of darkness, when at the sword’s point a crown is presented to him, as though in mimicry of martyrdom, and thereupon put upon his head, is admonished to resist and cast it off, and, if you like, transfer it to his shoulder, saying that Mithras is his crown. And thenceforth he is never crowned; and he has that for a mark to show who he is, if anywhere he be subjected to trial in respect of his religion; and he is at once believed to be a soldier of Mithras if he throws the crown away—if he say that in his god he has his crown. Let us take note of the devices of the devil, who is wont to ape some of God’s things with no other design than, by the faithfulness of his servants, to put us to shame, and to condemn us.
