游斯丁護教辭與對話 第 3-138 章

Know, then, O men, I said, that it has been said by God in Isaiah to Jerusalem, that 'In the flood of Noah I saved you.' This is what God meant: that the mystery of men being saved came to pass at the flood. For the righteous Noah, with the other men at the flood—that is, with his own wife and his three children and the wives of his sons, being eight in number—had a symbol of the eighth day in number, on which our Christ appeared, having risen from the dead, though in power it is ever the first.

For Christ, being the firstborn of all creation, has become also the beginning again of another race, of those regenerated by Him through water and faith and the wood that holds the mystery of the cross, in the manner that Noah too was saved in the wood, riding upon the waters with his own. When, then, the prophet says, 'In Noah I saved you,' as I said before, He speaks to the people who are likewise faithful toward God and have these symbols. For Moses too, having a rod in his hand, led your people through the sea.

But you suppose that He spoke only to your race or to the land. For since the whole earth, as the Scripture says, was flooded, and the water rose fifteen cubits above all the mountains, it is evident that God did not speak to the land, but to the people who obeyed Him, for whom also He had prepared beforehand a resting-place in Jerusalem, as has been demonstrated beforehand through all the symbols at the time of the flood—I said, that through water and faith and wood, those who prepare themselves beforehand and repent of the things in which they have sinned shall escape the judgement of God that is to come.