that is to say, in that innocence which preceded the fall into sin. For how can words of this kind of exhortation and invitation be suitable for that Jerusalem which killed the prophets, and stoned those that were sent to them, and at last crucified its very Lord? Neither indeed is salvationpromised to any one land at all, which must needs pass away with the fashion of the wholeworld. Even if anybody should venture strongly to contend that paradise is the holy land, which it may be possible to designate as the land of our first parentsAdam and Eve, it will even then follow that the restoration of paradise will seem to be promised to the flesh, whose lot it was to inhabit and keep it, in order that man may be recalled thereto just such as he was driven from it.
that he is here represented as speaking with the Lord, but only as standing, yet, inasmuch as he stood “mouth to mouth,” he must also have stood “face to face” with him, to use his words,4373
4373 It is difficult to see what this inquit means.
not far from him, in His very glory—not to say,4374
4374 Nedum.
in His presence. And with this glory he went away enlightened from Christ, just as he used to do from the Creator; as then to dazzle the eyes of the children of Israel, so now to smite those of the blinded Marcion, who has failed to see how this argument also makes against him.
