Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Occasion of Writing. Relative Position of Jews and Gentiles Illustrated.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
VII.
An Answer to the Jews.1126
| 1126 [This treatise
was written while our author was a Catholic. This seems to me the
best supported of the theories concerning it. Let us accept Pamelius,
for once and date it a.d. 198. Dr. Allix
following Baronius, will have it as late as a.d. 208. Neander thinks the work, after the quotation from
Isaiah in the beginning of chapter ninth, is not our
author’s, but was finished by another hand, clumsily annexing
what is said on the same chapter of Isaiah in the Third Book against
Marcion. It is only slightly varied. Bp. Kaye admits the very striking
facts instanced by Neander, in support of this theory, but demolishes,
with a word any argument drawn from thence that the genuine work was
written after the author’s lapse. This treatise is sufficiently
annotated by Thelwall, and covers ground elsewhere gone over in this
Series. My own notes are therefore very few.] |
[Translated by the Rev. S.
Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Occasion of Writing.
Relative Position of Jews and Gentiles Illustrated.
It happened very recently a
dispute was held between a Christian and a Jewish proselyte.
Alternately with contentious cable they each spun out the day until
evening. By the opposing din, moreover, of some partisans of the
individuals, truth began to be overcast by a sort of cloud. It was
therefore our pleasure that that which, owing to the confused noise of
disputation, could be less fully elucidated point by point, should be
more carefully looked into, and that the pen should determine, for
reading purposes, the questions handled.
For the occasion, indeed, of claiming Divine grace
even for the Gentiles derived a pre-eminent fitness from this fact,
that the man who set up to vindicate God’s Law as his own was of
the Gentiles, and not a Jew “of the stock of the
Israelites.”1127
For this
fact—that Gentiles are admissible to God’s Law—is
enough to prevent Israel from priding himself on the notion that
“the Gentiles are accounted as a little drop of a bucket,”
or else as “dust out of a threshing-floor:”1128
| 1128 See Isa. xl. 15: “dust of the
balance,” Eng. Ver.; ῥοπὴ
ζυγοῦ LXX. For the expression
“dust out of a threshing-floor,” however, see Dan. ii. 35" id="iv.ix.i-p10.3" parsed="|Ps|1|4|0|0;|Dan|2|35|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Ps.1.4 Bible:Dan.2.35">Ps. i. 4, Dan. ii. 35. | although we have God Himself as an adequate
engager and faithful promiser, in that He promised to Abraham that
“in his seed should be blest all nations of the
earth;”1129
and that1130
| 1130 This promise may be
said to have been given “to Abraham,” because (of course)
he was still living at the time; as we see by comparing Gen. xxi. 5 with xxv. 7 and 26. See, too, Heb.
xi. 9. | out of the womb of Rebecca “two
peoples and two nations were about to proceed,”1131
| 1131 Or, “nor did He
make, by grace, a distinction.” | —of course those of the Jews, that is,
of Israel; and of the Gentiles, that is ours. Each, then, was called a
people and a nation; lest, from the nuncupative
appellation, any should dare to claim for himself the privilege of
grace. For God ordained “two peoples and two nations”
as about to proceed out of the womb of one woman: nor did
grace1132
| 1132 Or, “nor did He
make, by grace, a distinction.” | make distinction in the nuncupative
appellation, but in the order of birth; to the effect that, which ever
was to be prior in proceeding from the womb, should be subjected to
“the less,” that is, the posterior. For thus unto Rebecca
did God speak: “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples
shall be divided from thy bowels; and people shall overcome people, and
the greater shall serve the less.”1133
Accordingly, since the people or nation of the Jews is
anterior in time, and “greater” through the grace of
primary favour in the Law, whereas ours is understood to be
“less” in the age of times, as having in the last era of
the world1134
attained the
knowledge of divine mercy: beyond doubt, through the edict of the
divine utterance, the prior and “greater”
people—that is, the Jewish—must necessarily serve the
“less;” and the “less” people—that is,
the Christian—overcome the “greater.” For, withal,
according to the memorial records of the divine Scriptures, the
people of the Jews—that is, the more ancient—quite
forsook God, and did degrading service to idols, and, abandoning the
Divinity, was surrendered to images; while “the people”
said to Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us.”1135
| 1135 Ex. xxxii. 1, 23; Acts vii. 39,
40. | And when the gold out of the necklaces of
the women and the rings of the men had been wholly smelted by fire,
and there had come forth a calf-like head, to this figment Israel with
one consent (abandoning God) gave honour, saying, “These are the
gods who brought us from the land of Egypt.”1136
| 1136 Ex. xxxii. 4: comp. Acts vii. 38–41; 1 Cor. x. 7; Ps.
cvi. 19–22. | For thus, in the later times in which kings
were governing them, did they again, in conjunction with Jeroboam,
worship golden kine, and groves, and enslave themselves to
Baal.1137
Whence is proved that they have ever been
depicted, out of the volume of the divine Scriptures, as guilty of the
crime of idolatry; whereas our “less”—that is,
posterior—people, quitting the idols which formerly it
used slavishly to serve, has been converted to the same God from whom
Israel, as we have above related, had departed.1138
For thus has the “less”—that is,
posterior—people overcome the “greater
people,” while it attains the grace of divine favour, from which
Israel has been divorced.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
