By Water & Blood

Book 1, Chapter 4: Why it is we reject the Jews' Way of Life, though we accept their Writings.

THESE, then, are the reasons why we have accepted and loved as belonging to ourselves the sacred books of the Hebrews, including as they do prophecies relating to us Gentiles. And the more so, since it was not Moses only who foretold the coming of the Lawgiver of the Gentiles after him, but really the whole succession of the prophets, who proclaimed the same truth with one voice, as David, when he said:

"Appoint, O Lord, a Lawgiver over them: let the nations know that they are but men."

See how he too speaks of a second Lawgiver of the nations. And in the same spirit in another (psalm) he calls on the Gentiles to sing, not the ancient song of Moses, but a new song, when he says:

"1. Sing to the Lord a new song; | sing to the Lord all the whole earth: | 3. proclaim among the nations his glory, | among all peoples his wonders: | 4. For great is the Lord, and very worthy to be praised, | he is terrible above all gods. | 5. For all the gods of the nations are demons, | but it is the Lord that made the heavens. | 7. Bring to the Lord ye families of the nations; | 8. bring to the Lord glory to his name."

And again: .

"10. Say among the nations, The Lord is King. | |23 For he has established the world, that it shall not be shaken."

And again:

"1. Sing to the Lord a new song, | for he hath done marvellous things, | 2. The Lord hath made known his salvation; | Before the nations he hath revealed righteousness. | 3. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God."

And notice how he ordains the new song not for the Jewish race only; the ancient song of Moses suited them, but for all the nations. This new song is called by Jeremiah, another Hebrew prophet, "a new covenant"where he says:

"31. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Juda: 32. not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt: for they abode not in my covenant, and I disregarded them, saith the Lord. 33. For this is my, covenant which I will make with the house of Israel, saith the Lord, I will put my laws in their minds, and on their hearts I will write (them), and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

You see here that he distinguishes two covenants, the old and the new, and says that the new would not be like the old which was given to the fathers. For the old covenant was given as a law to the Jews, when they had fallen from the religion of their forefathers, and had embraced the manners and life of the Egyptians, and had declined to the errors of polytheism, and the idolatrous superstitions of the Gentiles. It was intended to raise up the fallen, and to set on their feet those who were lying on their faces, by suitable teaching.

"For the law, it is said, is not for the righteous, but for the unjust and disorderly, for the unrighteous and for sinners, and for those like them."

But the new covenant leads those who, through our Saviour |24 by the grace and gift of God are raised up, to a rapid march into the kingdom promised by God. It summons all men equally to share together the same good things. This "new covenant" Isaiah, another of the Hebrew prophets, calls the "new law,"when he says:

"3. For out of Sion shall go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And all the nations shall go, and all the peoples shall be gathered together, and shall say, Let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob."

This law going forth from Sion, different from the law enacted in the desert by Moses on Mount Sinai, what can it be but the word of the Gospel, "going forth from Sion" through our Saviour Jesus Christ, and going through all the nations? For it is plain that it was in Jerusalem and Mount Sion adjacent thereto, where our Lord and Saviour for the most part lived and taught, that the law of the new covenant began and from thence went forth and shone upon all, according to the commands which He gave his disciples when He said:

"Go ye, and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you."

What could He mean but the teaching and discipline of the new covenant? Since, then, I have proved my facts, let us proceed to investigate together the character of the new covenant, and the new song and the new law that were foretold.

CHAPTER 5 

The Character of the New Covenant of Christ.

I HAVE now proved that the old covenant and the law given by Moses was only applicable to the Jewish race, and only to such of them as lived in their own land. It did not apply to other nations of the world nor to Jews |25 inhabiting foreign soil. And I have shown that the ideal of the new covenant must be helpful to the life of all nations: the members of its kingdom are to be restricted in no way whatever. Considerations of country, race or locality, or anything else are not to affect them in any way at all. The law and life of our Saviour Jesus Christ shows itself to be such, being a renewal of the ancient pre-Mosaic religion, in which Abraham, the friend of God, and his forefathers are shown to have lived. And if you cared to compare the life of Christians and the worship introduced among all nations by Christ with the lives of the men who with Abraham are witnessed to by Scripture as holy and righteous, you would find cne and the same ideal. For they too turned their backs on the errors of polytheism, they relinquished idolatrous superstition, they looked beyond the whole of the visible creation and deified neither sun nor moon, nor any part of the whole. They raised themselves to the Supreme God, Himself the Highest, the Creator of heaven and earth. And Moses himself bears this out in his history of ancient times when he records Abraham's saying:

"I will stretch forth my hand unto God most high, who hath created the heaven and the earth."

And when, before this, he introduces Melchizedek, whom he calls the priest of the Most High God, blessing Abraham as follows:

"Blessed be Abraham by God most high, who hath created the heaven and the earth."

And you would find that Enoch and Noah were reckoned just and well pleasing to God in the same way as Abraham. Job, ton, a just, true, blameless, devout man, averse from everything evil, is recorded as pre-Mosaic. He underwent a |26 trial of his utter devotion to the God of the Universe when he lost everything he had, and left the greatest example of holiness to posterity, when he spoke these philosophic words:

"21. I myself came forth naked from my mother's womb, and naked shall I depart. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away. As the Lord pleased, so it came to pass. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

That he said this as a worshipper of the God of the universe is made quite clear when he goes on to say:

"4. For he is wise in mind and mighty and great; 6. Who shakes the (earth) under heaven from its foundation and its pillars totter. 7. Who commands the sun and it rises not, and he seals up the stars; 8. Who alone has stretched out the heaven." 

If then the teaching of Christ has bidden all nations now to worship no other God but Him whom the men of old and the pre-Mosaic saints believed in, we are clearly partakers of the religion of these men of old time. And if we partake of their religion we shall surely share their blessing. Yes, and equally with us they knew and bore witness to the Word of God, Whom we love to call Christ. They were thought worthy in very remarkable ways of beholding His actual presence and theophany.

Remember how Moses calls the Being, Who appeared to the patriarchs, and often delivered to them the oracles afterwards written down in Scripture, sometimes God and Lord, and sometimes the Angel of the Lord. He clearly implies that this was not the Omnipotent God, but a secondary Being, rightly called the God and Lord of holy men, but the Angel of the Most High His Father. Thus he says:

"10. And Jacob went forth ... to Charran, 11. and came to a certain place, and he slept there. . . . And he |27 took of the stones of the place, and put it at his head, and lay down to sleep in that place, 12. and he dreamed: and behold, a ladder fixed on the earth whose top reached to heaven, and the angels of God ascended and descended on it. 13. And the Lord stood upon it, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: fear not, the earth, the land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed: 14 and thy seed shall be as the sand of the earth."

To which he adds:

"16. And Jacob arose in the morning, and took the stone, which he had put under his head, and set it up as a pillar."

Then further on he calls this God and Lord Who appeared to him the Angel of God. For Jacob says:

"11. For the Angel of God said to me in a dream, Jacob. And I said, What is it? "

And then:

"12. I have seen, he says, all that Laban does to thee. I am the God that was seen by thee in the place of God, where thou anointedst for me there a pillar, and thou vowedst to me there a vow."

This same being who appeared to Abraham is called Lord and God. He teaches the saint mysteriously of His Father's rule, and speaks some things, as it were, of another God, which I will examine in their place. Then, again, it is impious to suppose that the Being who answered Job after his severe trial was the same. For when He shows Himself first in the whirlwind and the clouds He reveals Himself as the God of the Universe, but He goes on to reveal Himself in a way which makes Job say:

"4. Hear me, O Lord, and I will speak. 5. I heard of thee before by the hearing of the ears, but now mine eye hath seen thee." 

And if it is not possible for the Most High God, the |28 Invisible, the Uncreated, and the Omnipotent to be said to be seen in mortal form, the Being Who was seen must have been the Word of God, Whom we call Lord as we do the Father. But it is needless for me to labour the point, since it is possible to find instances in Holy Scripture. These I will collect at leisure in connection with my present work to prove that He Who was seen by the patriarchal saints was none other than the Word of God.

Therefore besides the conception of the Creator of the Universe, we and they have inherited also the conception of Christ in common. Hence you can find instances of the pre-Mosaic saints being called "Christs," just as we are called Christians. Hear what the oracle in the Psalms says about them:

"12. When they were few in numbers, very few, and strangers in the land, 13. and they went from nation to nation, from (one) kingdom to another people: 14. He suffered no man to wrong them, and he reproved kings for their sakes, saying: 15. 'Touch not my Christs, and do no evil to my prophets.'"

The whole context shows that this must be referred to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: they therefore shared the name of Christ with us.