Anf-03 v.iv.v.xx Pg 30
Luke viii. 48.
what are you, that you should detect an hostility to the law in that act, which the Lord Himself shows us to have been done as a reward of faith? But will you have it that this faith of the woman consisted in the contempt which she had acquired for the law? Who can suppose, that a woman who had been. hitherto unconscious of any God, uninitiated as yet in any new law, should violently infringe that law by which she was up to this time bound? On what faith, indeed, was such an infringement hazarded? In what God believing? Whom despising? The Creator? Her touch at least was an act of faith. And if of faith in the Creator, how could she have violated His law,4244 4244 Ecquomodo legem ejus irrupit.
when she was ignorant of any other God? Whatever her infringement of the law amounted to, it proceeded from and was proportionate to her faith in the Creator. But how can these two things be compatible? That she violated the law, and violated it in faith, which ought to have restrained her from such violation? I will tell you how her faith was this above all:4245 4245 Primo.
it made her believe that her God preferred mercy even to sacrifice; she was certain that her God was working in Christ; she touched Him, therefore, nor as a holy man simply, nor as a prophet, whom she knew to be capable of contamination by reason of his human nature, but as very God, whom she assumed to be beyond all possibility of pollution by any uncleanness.4246 4246 Spurcitia.
She therefore, not without reason,4247 4247 Non temere.
interpreted for herself the law, as meaning that such things as are susceptible of defilement become defiled, but not so God, whom she knew for certain to be in Christ. But she recollected this also, that what came under the prohibition of the law4248 4248 In lege taxari.
was that ordinary and usual issue of blood which proceeds from natural functions every month, and in childbirth, not that which was the result of disordered health. Her case, however, was one of long abounding4249 4249 Illa autem redundavit.
ill health, for which she knew that the succour of God’s mercy was needed, and not the natural relief of time. And thus she may evidently be regarded as having discerned4250 4250 Distinxisse.
the law, instead of breaking it. This will prove to be the faith which was to confer intelligence likewise. “If ye will not believe,” says (the prophet), “ye shall not understand.”4251 4251
Anf-03 v.iv.v.xx Pg 39
Luke viii. 48.
that He was Himself the divine object of the faith of which He approved. Nor can I overlook the fact that His garment, by being touched, demonstrated also the truth of His body; for of course”4253 4253 Utique.
it was a body, and not a phantom, which the garment clothed.4254 4254 Epiphanius, in Hæres. xlii. Refut. 14, has the same remark.
This indeed is not our point now; but the remark has a natural bearing on the question we are discussing. For if it were not a veritable body, but only a fantastic one, it could not for certain have received contamination, as being an unsubstantial thing.4255 4255 Qua res vacua.
He therefore, who, by reason of this vacuity of his substance, was incapable of contamination, how could he possibly have desired this touch?4256 4256 In allusion to the Marcionite hypothesis mentioned above.
As an adversary of the law, his conduct was deceitful, for he was not susceptible of a real pollution.
