hooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight."[1] If therefore another law and word, going forth from Jerusalem, brought in such a [reign of] peace among the Gentiles which received it (the word), and convinced, through them, many a nation of its folly, then [only] it appears that the prophets spake of some other person. But if the law of liberty, that is, the word of God, preached by the apostles (who went forth from Jerusalem) throughout all the earth, caused such a change in the state of things, that these [nations] did form the swords and war-lances into ploughshares, and changed them into pruning-hooks for reaping the corn, [that is], into instruments used for peaceful purposes, and that they are now unaccustomed to fighting, but when smitten, offer also the other cheek,[2] then the prophets have not spoken these things of any other person, but of Him who effected them. This person is our Lord, and in Him is that declaration borne out; since it is He Himself who has made the plough, and introduced the pruning-hook, that is, the first semination of man, which was the creation exhibited in Adam,[3] and the gathering in of the produce in the last times by the Word; and, for this reason, since He joined the beginning to the end, and is the Lord of both. He has finally displayed the plough, in that the wood has been joined on to the iron, and has thus cleansed His land; because the Word, having been firmly united to flesh, and in its mechanism fixed with pins,[4] has reclaimed the savage earth. In the beginning. He figured forth the pruning-hook by means of Abel, pointing out that there should be a gathering in of a righteous race of men. He says, "For behold how the just man perishes, and no man considers it; and righteous men are taken away, and no man layeth it to heart."[5] These things were acted beforehand in Abel, were also previously declared by the prophets,
- ↑ Isa. ii. 3, 4; Mic. iv. 2, 3.
- ↑ Matt. v. 39.
- ↑ Vol. i. p. 40.
- ↑ This is following Harvey's conjectural emendation of the text, viz. "taleis" for "talis." He considers the pins here as symbolical of the nails by which our Lord was fastened to the cross. The whole passage is almost hopelessly obscure, though the general meaning may be guessed.
- ↑ Isa. lvii. 1.
