For who does not know that 'Christ' is named from anointing? He himself, recalling this very thing in the Gospel and most openly testifying that it was prefigured concerning himself, when he had called a certain Nathanael a true Israelite in whom was no guile, and when the latter, as though holding that stone at his head, confessed him to be the Son of God and King of Israel — in a manner anointing the stone by that confession, that is, confessing that he himself was the Christ — there the Lord opportunely recalled also that which Jacob then saw, Jacob who through the blessing was called Israel: 'Amen I say to you,' he said, 'you shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'
For this Israel had seen, when he had that stone at his head: a ladder from earth to heaven, by which the angels of God were ascending and descending; in whom are signified the evangelists, the preachers of Christ — ascending indeed, when to understand his most surpassing divinity they pass beyond the whole of creation, so as to find him 'in the beginning, God with God, through whom all things were made'; but descending, so as to find him 'made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law.' For in him is the ladder from earth even to heaven, from flesh even to spirit, because in him carnal men, by advancing as though by ascending, become spiritual.
To nourish these with milk, the spiritual themselves also descend in a certain way, when they cannot speak to them as to spiritual men, but as to carnal: thus one both ascends and descends upon the Son of Man. For the Son of Man is above, in our Head, which is the Savior himself; and the Son of Man is below, in his Body, which is the Church. We understand him to be also the ladder itself, since he himself said: 'I am the way.' To him, therefore, one ascends, that he may be understood in the churches; and to him one descends, that in his members the little ones may be nourished; and through him one both ascends and descends. For his preachers, following his example, not only raise themselves up to await him on high, but also humble themselves, that they may announce him with restraint.
Behold the Apostle ascending: 'Whether,' he says, 'we were beside ourselves, it is to God.' Behold him also descending: 'whether we are sober, it is for you.' Let him say too by whom he ascended and descended: 'For the charity of Christ,' he says, 'constrains us, judging this, that if one died for all, then all died; and he died for all, that those who live may now no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them and rose again.' — These holy spectacles in the Holy Scriptures, whom do they not delight? He who cannot endure sound doctrine turns aside to fables. And those fables indeed allure with a certain varied delight souls that are childish at whatever age of the body.
But let us, now the Body of Christ, recognize our own voice in the psalm and say to him: 'The unjust have told me of their delights, but not as your law, O Lord.' Christ meets me everywhere as I traverse and pant through those books, through those Scriptures, in that sweat of human condemnation, whether openly or in hidden fashion, and he refreshes me. He himself, even by a certain difficulty in the discovery of himself, inflames my desire, that what I find I may greedily drink in, and holding it laid up in my inmost marrow, may keep it wholesomely. He himself gives me a sign in Joseph, who, after his brothers had persecuted and sold him, is honored in Egypt after his labors. For we have learned of the labors of Christ in the world of the nations, which Egypt signified, through the various sufferings of the martyrs;
and now we behold the honor of Christ in that same globe of the earth, subjecting all things to himself by the distribution of his grain. He gives me a sign in the rod of Moses, which, having become a serpent upon the earth, prefigured his death coming from the serpent; but — as the seizing of its tail signifies — afterward, when now all things have been accomplished, at the end of the action it returns by rising again to what it had been, where, death being consumed through the restoration of life, nothing of the serpent appears. We too, his Body, are rolled about in the same mortality through the slippery courses of the times; but at the very last end, as the tail of the age, seized by the hand — that is, by the power of judgment — lest it slip further away, we shall be restored, and, the last enemy death being destroyed, rising again we shall be a rod of the kingdom in the right hand of God.
Now concerning the exodus of Israel from Egypt, let not I, but the Apostle speak: 'I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.' By expounding one thing he has introduced understanding into the rest. For if the Rock is Christ on account of firmness, why not also the manna Christ, as the living bread that came down from heaven? Those who truly feed on this live spiritually; for those who received the old figure carnally died. But when the Apostle says:
'they ate the same spiritual food,' he shows that this too is to be understood spiritually in Christ, just as he made clear why he had called the drink spiritual, when he added: 'but the Rock was Christ'; and when this was made clear, all things shone forth. Why then is the cloud too not Christ, and the pillar — since he is upright and firm and upholds our weakness, shining by night, not shining by day, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind? The Red Sea also is red: baptism, consecrated indeed by the blood of Christ. The pursuing enemies die at the rear: sins that are past. The people is led through the desert: all who are baptized, not yet enjoying the promised fatherland, but, hoping for what they do not see and awaiting it through patience, are as it were in the desert;
and there are the toilsome and perilous temptations, lest they turn back in their heart to Egypt. Yet not even there does Christ forsake them; for that pillar also does not withdraw. And the bitter waters grow sweet by the wood, because the enemies of the people, when the sign of Christ's cross is honored, grow tame; and the twelve fountains watering the seventy palm trees prefigure apostolic grace watering the peoples in the sevenfold number multiplied tenfold, that through the sevenfold gift of the Spirit the decalogue of the law may be fulfilled. And the enemy who strove to block the way is overcome by Moses' outstretched hands, the sign of the Lord's cross. And the deadly bites of the serpents are healed when the bronze serpent is lifted up and looked upon. This is declared by the very words of the Lord: 'As Moses lifted up,' he says,
the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life.' Do not even these things cry out? Is the deafness in hard hearts so great? The Passover is made in the slaying of a sheep: Christ is slain, of whom it is said in the Gospel: 'Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.' Those who keep the Passover are forbidden to break the bones: the bones of the Lord are not broken on the cross; the evangelist testifies that it was said from this: 'You shall not break a bone of him.' The doorposts are smeared with blood, that destruction may be driven off: the people are marked on their foreheads with the sign of the Lord's Passion for the safeguard of salvation. The law is given there on the fiftieth day after the Passover was performed:
the Holy Spirit came on the fiftieth day after the Lord's Passion. The law is said there to be written by the finger of God: the Lord says of the Holy Spirit, 'By the finger of God I cast out demons.' And Faustus cries out with closed eyes that he has found nothing in those writings that pertains to the foretelling of Christ! But what wonder, if he has eyes for reading and has not a heart for understanding — he who, set before the closed door of the divine secret, does not knock with the faith of piety, but insults with the arrogance of impiety? Plainly, so let it be, so let it happen; for it is just. Let the gate of salvation be shut against the proud; let the meek man come, whom the Lord teaches his ways: let him see both these things in those books and the rest, whether all or some, of such a kind that he may believe in all of them.
Let him see Jesus leading the people into the land of promise. For not without reason was he called this from the beginning, but by that very dispensation, with his name changed, he was called Jesus. Let him see the cluster of grapes from the land of promise hanging on the wood. Let him see in Jericho, as though in this mortal world, the harlot — of whom the Lord says that such go before the proud into the kingdom of heaven — through the window of her house, as through the mouth of her body, sending out the scarlet cord (which is surely the sign of blood), confessing unto salvation for the remission of sins. Let him see the walls of that same city, as the fortifications of the mortal age, fall when the ark of the testament had been carried around seven times, just as now through the ages —
which pass away in the alternation of the seven days, the testament of God goes around the whole globe of the earth, so that at the end of the ages death, the last enemy, may be destroyed, and out of the perdition of the impious the one house, as the one Church, may be delivered, cleansed from the foulness of fornication through the window of confession in the blood of remission. Let him see the times first of the judges, afterward of the kings, just as there will be first judgment, then afterward the kingdom; and in those very times of judges and kings, again and again in many and various ways Christ and the Church are prefigured. Who was it in Samson slaying the lion that met him, when he was going to the foreigners for the sake of seeking a wife, but he who, about to call the Church out of the nations, said: 'Rejoice, for I have overcome the world'?
What does the honeycomb built up in the mouth of that slain lion mean, but that behold we see the very laws of the earthly kingdom, which had before raged against Christ, now, their ferocity being destroyed, offer even bulwarks for the sweetness of the Gospel to be preached? What is that woman full of confidence, transfixing the temples of the enemy with the wood, but the faith of the Church destroying the kingdoms of the devil by the cross of Christ? What is the fleece drenched while the floor was dry, and afterward the floor drenched while the fleece was dry, but that first the one nation of the Hebrews had hidden in its holy mysteries the mystery of God, which is Christ, of which mystery the whole world was empty? But now, in the manifestation, the whole world has it, and that nation has been emptied. What now of the times of the kings, that I may recall a few things also from there?
Does not the priesthood, changed from the very beginning into Samuel when Eli was rejected, and the kingdom changed into David when Saul was rejected, cry aloud that a new priesthood and a new kingdom were being foretold, the old being rejected, which was a shadow of the thing to come — to come in our Lord Jesus Christ? Did not David himself, when he ate the loaves of proposition, which it was not lawful to eat except for the priests alone, prefigure that both would be in one person, that is, kingdom and priesthood in one Jesus Christ? Does it not, when the ten tribes were separated from the temple and two were left behind, sufficiently indicate what the Apostle says of that whole nation:
'A remnant has been saved through the election of grace'? Elijah is fed in the time of famine by ravens bringing bread in the morning and flesh in the evening: and the Manichaeans do not understand Christ in those books — Christ to whom, as it were hungering for our salvation, sinners confess faith, having now the firstfruits of the Spirit, but at the end, as it were toward the evening of the age, also the resurrection of the flesh. Elijah is sent to be fed to a foreign widow, who wished to gather two sticks before she should die: here the sign of the cross is expressed not only by the name of wood but also by the number of the sticks. Her meal and oil are blessed: the fruit and cheerfulness of charity, which, when it is spent, does not fail; for God loves a cheerful giver.
Boys mocking Elisha and shouting, 'Bald head, bald head!' are devoured by beasts: with childish folly deriding Christ crucified in the place of Calvary, they are invaded by demons and perish. Elisha sends a staff by his servant upon the dead boy, and he does not revive; he comes himself, joins and fits himself to his death, and the boy revives: the word of God sent the law through his servant, and it profited nothing to the human race dead in sins. Yet the law was not sent without cause; for he sent it who knew that it was first to be sent. He came himself, conformed himself to us, made a partaker of our death, and we were made alive.
When trees were being cut with axes, the iron, leaping out from the wood, was plunged into the depth of the river, and it returned onto the wood cast in from above by Elisha: so, when the presence of Christ, working through his body, was cutting down the impious Jews like unfruitful trees — because John had said of him, 'Behold the axe is laid to the roots of the tree' — through the intervening Passion he forsook that very body, descending into the depths of hell; and when the wood was placed above it, as though at its own handle, the spirit returning, he rose again. How many things I pass over, constrained by the necessity of brevity, those who read know.
Now that very transmigration into Babylon, whither the Spirit of God through the prophet Jeremiah also commands them to go and to pray for those in whose kingdom they sojourn, that in their peace there might also be peace for these, and to build houses and plant vineyards and set gardens — who does not recognize what it prefigured, if he has attended to the true Israelites in whom there is no guile, that through the apostolic dispensation, with the evangelical sacrament, they migrated to the kingdom of the nations? Whence the Apostle, as though repeating Jeremiah, says to us: 'I will therefore that first of all supplications, adorations,
intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for those who are in high station, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and charity. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.' From this, indeed, even for those believers, dwellings of peace have been built up, the basilicas of the Christian congregations, and vineyards planted anew, the peoples of the faithful, and gardens set, where even among all the vegetables that grain of mustard reigns. Under whose shade, stretched far and wide, even the high-aspiring pride of the nations rests by taking refuge, as in the birds of heaven.
For as to the fact that also after seventy years, according to the prophecy of the same Jeremiah, there is a return from captivity and the temple is renewed — what faithful one of Christ would not understand that, after the times have rolled by which run their course in the repetition of the sevenfold number of days, we too, that is, the Church of God, must return from the pilgrimage of this age to that heavenly Jerusalem? Through whom, if not through the law's Christ, the truly great priest, whose figure that Jesus, the great priest of that time in which the temple was built after the captivity, bore? Whom the prophet Zechariah saw in filthy garb, and the devil, who stood for his accusation, having been conquered — the filthy garment taken from him and the raiment of honor and glory given:
just as the body of Jesus Christ, which is the Church, when the adversary has been overcome at the end of the ages by judgment, is taken up from the mourning of pilgrimage into the glory of everlasting salvation. This too is most openly sung in the psalm of the dedication of the house: 'You have turned my mourning into joy for me; you have torn my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, that my glory may sing to you and I may not be pierced with sorrow.' Who is able, on the occasion of another work, to touch upon — with however great brevity — all the things that in those old books of the law and the prophets announce Christ figuratively? Unless perhaps someone supposes it is done by ingenuity, that those things which ran their course in the order of events through their own times are turned by interpretation into significations of Christ.
This perhaps the Jews or the pagans can say; but for those who wish to be thought Christians, apostolic authority presses down upon their neck, saying: 'All these things happened to them in figure,' and: 'All these things were figures of ourselves.' For if Ishmael and Isaac, two men born, signify two testaments, what must be believed concerning so many deeds which were done by no natural use, by no necessity of business? Do they signify nothing? If any one of us, who are ignorant of Hebrew letters — that is, the very characters of the words — were to see them written on a wall in some place of honor: who would be so senseless as to think the wall painted in that manner?
and would he not rather understand it to be writing, so that, even if he could not read, he would nonetheless not doubt that those characters signify something? Thus first of all those things which are in the old instrument of the holy Scriptures, whoever reads them not with a perverse mind ought to be so moved as not to doubt that they signify something. For example: if it was fitting that woman be made as a help for man, was any necessity forcing, or any usefulness persuading, that this too should come to pass — that she be made from the side of the sleeping man? If, for the sake of escaping the flood, there was need to build an ark, what need was there that its measurements should be made in that particular way, or even be recorded in writings to be handed down for religion to posterity?
If, for the sake of restoring the kind, animals had to be enclosed, what need was there for that particular number, seven of the clean, two of the unclean? Necessity indeed forced that an entrance to the ark be made; but what forced that it be made in the side, or even be committed to memory through letters? Abraham is commanded to immolate his son: he had been commanded, that his obedience, proved by so great a test, might become known to posterity; the son more fittingly carried the wood, lest the aged father carry it; he was not afterward permitted to strike the son, lest by a most grievous bereavement he strike himself: would Abraham have been any less proved, even if he returned with no blood shed?
Or if the sacrifice now had to be completed, did it pertain to any increase of the victim that that ram should appear clinging by its horns in the thicket? Thus, when all things are considered and are found, as though superfluous, woven together with the necessary, they admonish the human mind — that is, the rational mind — first that something is being signified, and then to seek what these things signify. And so even the Jews themselves, who deride that Christ whose Passion we have recognized, unwilling that he should seem to have been foretold by such figures of things not only spoken but also done, are compelled to tell us what those things signify: and unless they concede that they signify something, they do not defend books of such great divine authority from the ignominy of foolish fables.
A certain Philo saw this, a man most liberally learned, one of them, whose eloquence the Greeks do not hesitate to equal to Plato's, and he attempted to interpret some things — not for the understanding of Christ, in whom he had not believed, but so that from this it might rather appear how great a difference there is: whether you refer all things to Christ, on whose account they were truly so spoken, or whether, apart from him, you pursue whatever conjectures with whatever sharpness of mind, and how much force that has which the Apostle says: 'When you have passed over to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.' For, to recall a certain thing of this same Philo, wishing the ark of the flood to be understood as fashioned according to the pattern of the human body, he handled all things as it were limb by limb.
To him, consulting most subtly even the rules of numbers, all things suitably corresponded which would in no way hinder the understanding of Christ, since in a human body that Savior of the human race also appeared; and yet they did not compel it, since a human body belongs surely to the rest of men as well. But when it came to the door which was made in the side of the ark, all conjecture of human ingenuity failed. Yet, that he might say something, he dared to believe that by that door were signified the lower parts of the body, by which urine and dung are discharged, dared even to say it, dared even to write it. No wonder, if, the door not being found, he thus erred. But had he passed over to Christ, the veil being removed, he would have found the sacraments of the Church flowing from the side of that Man.
For because it was foretold, 'They shall be two in one flesh,' therefore in the ark too some things are referred to Christ, but others to the Church, all of which is Christ. So too in the other interpretations of figures, throughout the whole text of divine Scripture, one may consider and compare the meanings of those who understand Christ there, and of those who, apart from Christ, attempt to twist those things to whatever other meanings. Nor do the pagans clamor against us in this; for they do not dare to contradict, lest we should interpret those things — not only spoken but also done — as taken figuratively for the understanding of Christ, especially because those things which we understand to have been foretold,
we also demonstrate to have been fulfilled — whereas they, in order somehow to commend their fables, attempt by interpretation to refer them to I know not what physiologies or theologies, that is, natural or divine explanations, on the one hand fully enough indicating what sort of things they are, but on the other dissembling, while they laugh at in the theaters those things which they venerate in the temples — too free in baseness, too enslaved in superstition. But if anyone says to us that other things were neither done nor written for this purpose, that Christ might be understood in them: apart from that so great harmony of things prefigured and now fulfilled, he will be struck down by other prophetic presages, open and manifest, such as this: 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed.' This was said to Abraham.
This to Isaac, this to Jacob; whence not undeservedly he says: 'I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob' — being about surely to fulfill, in the blessing of all nations, what he promised from their seed. Nor without desert did Abraham himself, when his servant had sworn to him, bid him place his hand under his thigh, knowing that thence would come the flesh of Christ, in whom that all nations should be blessed we do not now foretell, but what was then foretold, we now behold. I would wish to know — nay, better that I did not know — with what blindness of mind Faustus read the passage where Jacob called his sons and said: 'Gather yourselves together, that I may announce to you what shall befall you in the last days: gather yourselves together and hear, you sons of Jacob; hear Israel your father.'
Here certainly no one doubts that the person of one prophesying has been made clear. Let us hear then what he says to his son Judah, from whose tribe Christ came of the seed of David according to the flesh, as the apostolic doctrine testifies. 'Judah,' he says, 'your brothers shall praise you; your hands upon the backs of your enemies; the sons of your father shall adore you. A lion's whelp is Judah; from a shoot, my son, you have gone up as you reclined; you slept as a lion and as a lion's whelp — who shall rouse him up? A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until there come the things that are laid up for him; and he himself is the expectation of the nations, binding his colt to the vine and the foal of the ass to the vine-shoot; he shall wash his robe in wine and his mantle in the blood of the grape;
his eyes shall be gleaming from wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.' Let these things be false, let these things be obscure, if they did not shine forth in Christ with the most evident light — if his brothers the apostles and all his coheirs do not praise him, seeking not their own glory but his; if his hands are not upon the backs of his enemies; if all who still oppose him are not pressed down and bent to the earth as the Christian peoples grow; if the sons of Jacob did not adore him in the remnant which was saved through the election of grace; if he himself is not a lion's whelp, since by being born he was made a little one — for this reason it was added: 'from a shoot, my son.'
For the reason has indeed been given why 'a whelp,' in whose praise it is written elsewhere: 'A lion's whelp is stronger than beasts of burden' — that is, even the little one stronger than the greater — if he did not go up upon the cross as he reclined, when with bowed head he rendered up the spirit; if he did not sleep as a lion, since even in death itself he was not conquered but conquered, and as a lion's whelp — for from that whence he was born, thence he died — if he himself did not rouse him from the dead, whom no man has seen nor can see (for by what is said, 'Who shall rouse him up?', the signification of one as it were unknown is sufficiently expressed); if a prince failed from Judah and a leader from his loins before there came, at the fitting time, the things which had been promised as though laid up.
For there are most certain letters of the history of the Jews themselves, by which it is shown that first a foreigner, Herod, was king in the nation of the Jews, at which time Christ was born. Thus a king from the seed of Judah did not fail until there came the things that were laid up for him. But because what was promised did not profit the faithful Jews alone, see what follows: 'and he himself is the expectation of the nations.' He himself bound his colt to the vine, that is, his people, preaching in sackcloth and crying: 'Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.' But the people of the nations, subjected to him, we recognize as compared to the foal of the ass, upon which also he sat, leading it into Jerusalem, that is, into the vision of peace, teaching the meek his ways.
If he does not wash his robe in wine: for it is that glorious Church, which he presents to himself not having spot or wrinkle; to which it is said also through Isaiah: 'If your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow.' Whence, if not from sins forgiven? In what wine, then, if not that of which it is said, that it 'shall be poured out for many unto the remission of sins'? For he himself is that cluster of grapes which hung upon the wood. Therefore here too see what he adds: 'and his mantle in the blood of the grape.' But now, that his eyes gleam from wine — those members in his body recognize this, to whom it has been granted, in a certain holy inebriation of a mind estranged from things temporal that slip away below, to gaze upon the eternal light of wisdom.