Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Examples of Such Offences Under the Old Dispensation No Pattern for the Disciples of the New. But Even the Old Has Examples of Vengeance Upon Such Offences.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
VI.—Examples of Such Offences Under the Old Dispensation No
Pattern for the Disciples of the New. But Even the Old Has
Examples of Vengeance Upon Such Offences.
Plainly, if you show by what patronages of
heavenly precedents and precepts it is that you open to adultery
alone—and therein to fornication also—the gate of
repentance, at this very line our hostile encounter will forthwith
cross swords. Yet I must necessarily prescribe you a law, not to
stretch out your hand after the old things,749
not
to look backwards:750
for “the
old things are passed away,”751
| 751 There is no passage, so
far as I am aware, in Isaiah containing this distinct assertion.
We have almost the exact words in Rev. xxi. 4. The reference may be to
Isa. xlii. 9; but there the Eng. ver. reads,
“are come to pass,” and the LXX. have τὰ ἀπ᾽
ἀρχῆς ἰδου
ἥκασι. | according to
Isaiah; and “a renewing hath been renewed,”752
according to Jeremiah; and “forgetful
of former things, we are reaching forward,”753
according to the apostle; and “the law and the prophets (were)
until John,”754
according to the
Lord. For even if we are just now beginning with the Law in
demonstrating (the nature of) adultery, it is justly with that phase of
the law which Christ has “not dissolved, but
fulfilled.”755
For it is the
“burdens” of the law which were “until John,”
not the remedial virtues. It is the “yokes” of
“works” that have been rejected, not those
of disciplines.756
“Liberty in
Christ”757
| 757 See Gal. ii. 4; v. 1, 13. | has done no injury to
innocence. The law of piety, sanctity, humanity, truth, chastity,
justice, mercy, benevolence, modesty, remains in its entirety; in which
law “blessed (is) the man who shall meditate by day and by
night.”758
About that
(law) the same David (says) again: “The law of the Lord
(is) unblameable,759
converting souls; the
statutes of the Lord (are) direct, delighting hearts; the precept of
the Lord far-shining, enlightening eyes.” Thus, too, the
apostle: “And so the law indeed is holy, and the precept
holy and most good”760
—“Thou
shalt not commit adultery,” of course. But he had withal
said above: “Are we, then, making void the law through
faith? Far be it; but we are establishing the law”761
—forsooth in those (points) which, being
even now interdicted by the New Testament, are prohibited by an even
more emphatic precept: instead of, “Thou shalt not commit
adultery,” “Whoever shall have seen with a view to
concupiscence, hath already committed adultery in his own
heart;”762
and instead of,
“Thou shalt not kill,” “Whoever shall have said to
his brother, Racha, shall be in danger of hell.”763
Ask (yourself) whether the law of not
committing adultery be still in force, to which has been added that of
not indulging concupiscence. Besides, if any precedents (taken
from the Old Dispensation) shall favour you in (the secrecy of) your
bosom, they shall not be set in opposition to this discipline which we
are maintaining. For it is in vain that an additional law has
been reared, condemning the origin even of sins—that is,
concupiscences and wills—no less than the actual deeds; if the
fact that pardon was of old in some cases conceded to adultery is to be
a reason why it shall be conceded at the present day. “What
will be the reward attaching to the restrictions imposed upon the more
fully developed discipline of the present day, except that the elder
(discipline) may be made the agent for granting indulgence to your
prostitution?” In that case, you will grant pardon to the
idolater too, and to every apostate, because we find the People itself,
so often guilty of these crimes, as often reinstated in their former
privileges. You will maintain communion, too, with the
murderer: because Ahab, by deprecation, washed away (the guilt
of) Naboth’s blood;764
and David, by
confession, purged Uriah’s slaughter, together with its
cause—adultery.765
That done, you
will condone incests, too, for Lot’s sake;766
and fornications combined with incest, for Judah’s sake;767
and base marriages with prostitutes, for
Hosea’s sake;768
and not only the
frequent repetition of marriage, but its simultaneous plurality, for
our fathers’ sakes: for, of course, it is meet that there
should also be a perfect equality of grace in regard of all
deeds to which indulgence was in days bygone granted, if on the ground
of some pristine precedent pardon is claimed for adultery.
We, too, indeed have precedents in the self-same antiquity on the side
of our opinion,—(precedents) of judgment not merely not waived,
but even summarily executed upon fornication. And of course it is
a sufficient one, that so vast a number—(the number) of
24,000—of the People, when they committed fornication with the
daughters of Madian, fell in one plague.769
But, with an eye to the glory of Christ, I prefer to derive (my)
discipline from Christ. Grant that the pristine days may have
had—if the Psychics please—even a right of
(indulging) every immodesty; grant that, before Christ, the flesh may
have disported itself, nay, may have perished before its Lord
went to seek and bring it back: not yet was it worthy of the gift
of salvation; not yet apt for the office of sanctity. It was
still, up to that time, accounted as being in Adam, with its own
vicious nature, easily indulging concupiscence after whatever it had
seen to be “attractive to the sight,”770
and looking back at the lower things, and checking its itching with
fig-leaves.771
Universally
inherent was the virus of lust—the dregs which are formed out of
milk contain it—(dregs) fitted (for so doing), in that even the
waters themselves had not yet been bathed. But when the Word of
God descended into flesh,—(flesh) not unsealed even by
marriage,—and “the Word was made flesh,”772
—(flesh) never to be unsealed by
marriage,—which was to find its way to the tree not of
incontinence, but of endurance; which was to taste from that tree not
anything sweet, but something bitter; which was to pertain not to the
infernal regions, but to heaven; which was to be precinct not with the
leaves of lasciviousness, but the flowers of holiness;773
which was to impart to the waters its own
purities—thenceforth, whatever flesh (is) “in
Christ”774
has lost its pristine
soils, is now a thing different, emerges in a new state, no longer
(generated) of the slime of natural seed, nor of the grime of
concupiscence, but of “pure water” and a
“clean Spirit.” And, accordingly,
why excuse it on the ground of pristine precedent? It did not
bear the names of “body of Christ,”775
of
“members of Christ,”776
of “temple
of God,”777
at the time when it
used to obtain pardon for adultery. And thus if, from the moment
when it changed its condition, and “having been baptized into
Christ put on Christ,”778
and was
“redeemed with a great price”—“the
blood,” to wit, “of the Lord and Lamb”779
—you take hold of any one precedent (be
it precept, or law, or sentence,) of indulgence granted, or to be
granted, to adultery and fornication,—you have likewise at our
hands a definition of the time from which the age of the question
dates.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
