Chapter 33 [XVIII.]--How Christ is Our Mediator.
Of this flesh and blood Melchizedek also, when he blessed Abram himself, [1994] gave the testimony which is very well known to Christian believers, so that long afterwards it was said to Christ in the Psalms: "Thou art a Priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek." [1995] This was not then an accomplished fact, but was still future; yet that faith of the fathers, which is the self-same faith as our own, used to chant it. Now, to all who find death in Adam, Christ is of this avail, that He is the Mediator for life. He is, however, not a Mediator, because He is equal with the Father; for in this respect He is Himself as far distant from us as the Father; and how can there be any medium where the distance is the very same? Therefore the apostle does not say, "There is one Mediator between God and men, even Jesus Christ;" but his words are, "The Man Christ Jesus." [1996] He is the Mediator, then, in that He is man,--inferior to the Father, by so much as He is nearer to ourselves, and superior to us, by so much as He is nearer to the Father. This is more openly expressed thus: "He is inferior to the Father, because in the form of a servant;" [1997] superior to us, because without spot of sin.
[1994] Gen. xiv. 18-20.
[1995] Ps. cx. 4.
[1996] 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[1997] Phil. ii. 7.
Chapter 34 [XXIX.]--No Man Ever Saved Save by Christ.
Now, whoever maintains that human nature at any period required not the second Adam for its physician, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted as an enemy to the grace of God; not in a question where doubt or error might be compatible with soundness of belief, but in that very rule of faith which makes us Christians. How happens it, then, that the human nature, which first existed, is praised by these men as being so far less tainted with evil manners? How is it that they overlook the fact that men were even then sunk in so many intolerable sins, that, with the exception of one man of God and his wife, and three sons and their wives, the whole world was in God's just judgment destroyed by the flood, even as the little land of Sodom was afterwards with fire? [1998] From the moment, then, when "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all sinned," [1999] the entire mass of our nature was ruined beyond doubt, and fell into the possession of its destroyer. And from him no one--no, not one--has been delivered, or is being delivered, or ever will be delivered, except by the grace of the Redeemer.
[1998] See Gen. vii. and xix.
[1999] Rom. v. 12.
Chapter 35 [XXX.]--Why the Circumcision of Infants Was Enjoined Under Pain of So Great a Punishment.
The Scripture does not inform us whether before Abraham's time righteous men or their children were marked by any bodily or visible sign. [2000] Abraham himself, indeed, received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith. [2001] And he received it with this accompanying injunction: All the male infants of his household were from that very time to be circumcised, while fresh from their mother's womb, on the eighth day from their birth; [2002] so that even they who were not yet able with the heart to believe unto righteousness, should nevertheless receive the seal of the righteousness of faith. And this command was imposed with so fearful a sanction, that God said: "That soul shall be cut off from his people, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised on the eighth day." [2003] If inquiry be made into the justice of so terrible a penalty, will not the entire argument of these men about free will, and the laudable soundness and purity of nature, however cleverly maintained, fall to pieces, struck down and fractured to atoms? For, pray tell me, what evil has an infant committed of his own will, that, for the negligence of another in not circumcising him, he himself must be condemned, and with so severe a condemnation, that that soul must be cut off from his people? It was not of any temporal death that this fear was inflicted, since of righteous persons, when they died, it used rather to be said, "And he was gathered unto his people;" [2004] or, "He was gathered to his fathers:" [2005] for no attempt to separate a man from his people is long formidable to him, when his own people is itself the people of God.
[2000] Sacramento.
[2001] Rom. iv. 11.
[2002] Gen. xvii. 10.
[2003] Gen. xvii. 14.
[2004] Gen. xxv. 17.
[2005] 1 Macc. ii. 69.