By Water & Blood

Book 9, Chapter 13

From Isaiah.

Of the Miracles He Performed. 

[Passage quoted, Isa. xxxv. 3.]

Now we have this prophecy fulfilled in the Gospels, partly, when they brought to our Lord and Saviour a paralytic lying on a bed, whom He made whole with a word; and partly, when many that were blind and possessed with (d) daemons, yea, labouring under various diseases and weaknesses, were released from their sufferings by His saving power. Nor should we forget how even now throughout the whole world multitudes bound by all forms of evil, full of ignorance of Almighty God in their souls, are healed and cured miraculously and beyond all argument by the medicine of His teaching. Except that now we call Him God as we should, as One Who can work thus, as I have already shewn in the evidence of His Divinity. Yea, surely (448) it is right now to acknowledge Him to be God, since He has given proof of power divine and truly inspired.

For it was specifically God's work to give strength to the paralysed, to give life to the dead, to supply health to the sick, to open the eyes of the blind, to restore the lame, and to make the tongue-tied speak plain, all of which things were done by our Saviour Jesus Christ, because He was God, and they have been witnessed to by many throughout (b) all the world that preach Him—whose evidence unvarnished and veritable is confirmed by trial of torture, and by persistence even unto death, which they have shewn forth before kings and rulers and all nations, witnessing to the truth of what they preach. And I think that the spirit of prophecy addresses to these apostles and evangelists the words that begin with, "Lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees." For when they had grown weary (c) in their hands and powers of action, in their feet and walking with the long circuit of Mosaic observance, He awaked them to the life of the Gospel, and said, "Be strong, ye hands that hang down, and feeble knees," to |179 prepare them, that is to say, for the Gospel race. And be strong, too, to encourage others, and to urge them to cling to the salvation of the Gospel, ye that before were low in spirit, and let not any fear take you of them that oppose the Gospel preaching, but against them be strong and of a good courage.

"Behold my Son, I will succour him, my chosen, my Spirit hath accepted him, he shall bear judgment to the nations."

Wherefore it is also said concerning the Word of the new covenant:

"For out of Zion shall come forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge in the midst of the nations."

For there is little doubt that He effects the calling of them that turn to Him with divine justice and ineffable counsels. And, moreover, as teaching us of the divine judgment, and instructing us always to act as under judgment, He is said "to bear judgment to the nations."