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| On the Mission of the Seventy Disciples, and Christ's Charge to Them. Precedents Drawn from the Old Testament. Absurdity of Supposing that Marcion's Christ Could Have Given the Power of Treading on Serpents and Scorpions.
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Chapter
XXIV.—On the Mission of the Seventy Disciples, and Christ’s
Charge to Them. Precedents Drawn from the Old Testament.
Absurdity of Supposing that Marcion’s Christ Could Have Given the
Power of Treading on Serpents and Scorpions.
He chose also seventy other missionaries4415
| 4415 Apostolos:
Luke x. i. | besides the twelve. Now why, if the twelve
followed the number of the twelve fountains of Elim,4416
| 4416 Compare above, book
iv. chap. xiii. p. 364. | should not the seventy correspond to the
like number of the palms of that place?4417
| 4417 Ex.
xv. 27 and Num. xxxiii. 9. |
Whatever be the Antitheses of the comparison, it is a diversity
in the causes, not in the powers, which has mainly produced them.
But if one does not keep in view the diversity of the
causes,4418
| 4418 Causarum:
“occasions” or circumstances. | he is very apt to
infer a difference of powers.4419
| 4419 Potestatum. In
Marcionite terms, “The Gods of the Old and the New
Testaments.” | When the
children of Israel went out of Egypt, the Creator brought them forth
laden with their spoils of gold and silver vessels, and with loads
besides of raiment and unleavened dough;4420
whereas Christ commanded His disciples not to carry even a
staff4421
for their journey. The former were thrust
forth into a desert, but the latter were sent into cities. Consider the
difference presented in the occasions,4422
| 4422 Causarum
offerentiam. |
and you will understand how it was one and the same power which
arranged the mission4423
| 4423 Expeditionem, with the
sense also of “supplies” in the next clause. | of His people
according to their poverty in the one case, and their plenty in the
other. He cut down4424
their supplies when
they could be replenished through the cities, just as He had
accumulated4425
them when exposed
to the scantiness of the desert. Even shoes He forbade them to carry.
For it was He under whose very protection the people wore not out a
shoe,4426
even in the wilderness for the space of so
many years. “No one,” says He, “shall ye salute by
the way.”4427
What a destroyer of
the prophets, forsooth, is Christ, seeing it is from them that He
received his precept also! When Elisha sent on his servant Gehazi
before him to raise the Shunammite’s son from death, I rather
think he gave him these instructions:4428
“Gird up thy loins, and take my staff in thine hand, and go thy
way: if thou meet any man, salute him not;4429
| 4429 Literally,
“bless him not, i.e., salute him not.” |
and if any salute thee, answer him not again.”4430
| 4430 Literally,
“answer him not, i.e., return not his salvation.” | For what is a wayside blessing but a mutual
salutation as men meet? So also the Lord commands: “Into
whatsoever house they enter, let them say, Peace be to
it.”4431
Herein He follows
the very same example. For Elisha enjoined upon his servant the same
salutation when he met the Shunammite; he was to say to her:
“Peace to thine husband, peace to thy child.”4432
Such will be rather our Antitheses;
they compare Christ with, instead of sundering Him from, the Creator.
“The labourer is worthy of his hire.”4433
Who could better pronounce such a sentence
than the Judge? For to decide that the workman deserves his wages, is
in itself a judicial act. There is no award which consists not in a
process of judgment. The law of the Creator on this point also presents
us with a corroboration, for He judges that labouring oxen are as
labourers worthy of their hire: “Thou shalt not muzzle,”
says He, “the ox when he treadeth out the corn.”4434
Now, who is so good to man4435
| 4435 Compare above, book
ii. chap. 17, p. 311. | as He who is also merciful to cattle?
Now, when Christ pronounced labourers to be worthy of their hire, He,
in fact, exonerated from blame that precept of the Creator about
depriving the Egyptians of their gold and silver vessels.4436
| 4436 See this argued at
length above, in book ii. chap. 20, p. 313. | For they who had built for the Egyptians
their houses and cities, were surely workmen worthy of their hire, and
were not instructed in a fraudulent act, but only set to claim
compensation for their hire, which they were unable in any other way to
exact from their masters.4437
That the kingdom of
God was neither new nor unheard of, He in this way affirmed, whilst at
the same time He bids them announce that it was near at hand.4438
Now it is that which was once far off, which can be properly
said to have become near. If, however, a thing had never existed
previous to its becoming near, it could never have been said to have
approached, because it had never existed at a distance. Everything
which is new and unknown is also sudden.4439
Everything which is sudden, then, first receives the accident of
time4440
when it is announced, for it then first puts
on appearance of form.4441
Besides it will be
impossible for a thing either to have been tardy4442
all the while it remained
unannounced,4443
| 4443 The announcement
(according to the definition) defining the beginning of its existence
in time. | or to have
approached4444
from the time it
shall begin to be announced.
He likewise adds, that they should say to such as
would not receive them: “Notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that
the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”4445
If He does not enjoin this by way of a
commination, the injunction is a most useless one. For what
mattered it to them that the kingdom was at hand, unless its approach
was accompanied with judgment?—even for the salvation of such as
received the announcement thereof. How, if there can be a threat
without its accomplishment, can you have in a threatening god, one that
executes also, and in both, one that is a judicial being?4446
| 4446 Et judicem in
utroque. | So, again, He commands that the dust be
shaken off against them, as a testimony,—the very particles of
their ground which might cleave4447
to the sandal,
not to mention4448
any other sort of
communication with them.4449
But if their
churlishness4450
and inhospitality
were to receive no vengeance from Him, for what purpose does He premise
a testimony, which surely forbodes some threats? Furthermore, when the
Creator also, in the book of Deuteronomy, forbids the reception of the
Ammonites and the Moabites into the church,4451
because, when His people came from Egypt, they fraudulently withheld
provisions from them with inhumanity and inhospitality,4452
it will be manifest that the prohibition of
intercourse descended to Christ from Him. The form of it which He
uses—“He that despiseth you, despiseth me”4453
—the Creator had also addressed to
Moses: “Not against thee have they murmured, but against
me.”4454
Moses, indeed, was
as much an apostle as the apostles were prophets. The authority of both
offices will have to be equally divided, as it proceeds from one and
the same Lord, (the God) of apostles and prophets. Who is He that
shall bestow “the power of treading on serpents and
scorpions?”4455
Shall it be He who
is the Lord of all living creatures or he who is not god over a single
lizard? Happily the Creator has promised by Isaiah to give this power
even to little children, of putting their hand in the cockatrice den
and on the hole of the young asps without at all receiving
hurt.4456
And, indeed, we are aware (without doing
violence to the literal sense of the passage, since even these noxious
animals have actually been unable to do hurt where there has been
faith) that under the figure of scorpions and serpents are portended
evil spirits, whose very prince is described4457
by
the name of serpent, dragon, and every other most conspicuous beast in
the power of the Creator.4458
This power the
Creator conferred first of all upon His Christ, even as the ninetieth
Psalm says to Him: “Upon the asp and the basilisk shalt Thou
tread; the lion and the dragon shalt Thou trample under
foot.”4459
So also Isaiah:
“In that day the Lord God shall draw His sacred, great, and
strong sword” (even His Christ) “against that dragon, that
great and tortuous serpent; and He shall slay him in that
day.”4460
But when the same
prophet says, “The way shall be called a clean and holy way; over
it the unclean thing shall not pass, nor shall be there any unclean
way; but the dispersed shall pass over it, and they shall not err
therein; no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up
thereon; it shall not be found there,”4461
he
points out the way of faith, by which we shall reach to God; and then
to this way of faith he promises this utter crippling4462
and subjugation of all noxious
animals. Lastly, you may discover the suitable times of the
promise, if you read what precedes the passage: “Be strong, ye
weak hands and ye feeble knees: then the eyes of the blind shall be
opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then shall the lame man
leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall be
articulate.”4463
| 4463 Isa. xxxv. 3, 5, 6, Sept. | When, therefore, He
proclaimed the benefits of His cures, then also did He put the
scorpions and the serpents under the feet of His
saints—even He who had first received this power from the Father,
in order to bestow it upon others and then manifested it forth
conformably to the order of prophecy.4464
| 4464 Secundum ordinem
prædicationis. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
