約伯倫理 第 1262 章

68. To whom a place was given in the wilderness and in the land of saltness, when the Gentile world received him.—For in the Gentile world, in which there was no patriarch, no prophet, there was almost no man that used reason unto the understanding of God. Of this wilderness it is said through Isaiah: The desert and the pathless land shall be glad, and the wilderness shall exult and shall flourish like the lily (Isa. 35:1). And again it is said of the Church: He shall make her desert as delights, and her wilderness as the garden of the Lord (Isa. 51:3). But the land of saltness is this same wilderness repeated, which, before it knew the true wisdom of God, had brought forth saltness, because, bearing no greenness of good understanding, it had a taste for perverse things.

He received, therefore, a home in the wilderness and a dwelling in the land of saltness, because God, incarnate for men, having forsaken Judea, took possession of the hearts of the Gentiles. Whence it is said to him by the Father's voice through the prophet: Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession (Ps. 2:8). He who, according to that he is God, gives all things with the Father, according to that he is man, receives among all things from the Father, as it is written: He hath given him power to do judgment also, because he is the Son of man (John 5:27). And again it is written: Knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands (John 13:1[3]). Or as he himself says: All that the Father giveth me shall come to me (John 6:37).

But now, if it be asked what difference there is between a house and a tent, a house is in habitation, a tent in journeying. The hearts of the Gentiles, therefore, he had as it were certain tents by coming, but by establishing them through righteousness, he made them a house by dwelling. And because he scorned to imitate the life of those to whom he had come, it is rightly subjoined: