is the shepherd of shepherds; if thou thinkest of the edifice, Christ is the foundation of foundations.
And later he [Augustine] gives the reason for the prophets and apostles being called the foundations of the structure of the city of Jerusalem, and asks: "Why are they the foundations? Because their authority bears up—portat—our infirmity. How are they gates—porte? Because by them we go into the kingdom of God, for they preach to us. And as we go in by them, so we go in by Christ, for he is the door. And there are said to be twelve gates of Jerusalem, and Christ is the one gate and Christ is the twelve gates, because Christ is in the twelve gates." Thus much Augustine. And on that text of Rev. 21:14, "The wall of the city having twelve foundations," the Gloss says: "that is the prophets in whose faith the apostles were grounded, for from them faith passed on by succession to the apostles, whose preaching had the same belief as had the prophets who also said the same thing. Or let us accept the apostles as the foundations in whom the whole fortification of the church is grounded. Again, in this passage it is said: "All the foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with a precious stone, and the first foundation was jasper." The Gloss says: "The foundations, that is, the prophets and apostles, are adorned in themselves with graces of every kind."
Behold how Christ is the foundation of the church and the apostles are the foundations! Christ is by a figure of speech—antonomastice—the foundation because the edifice of the church begins from him and is finished in him and through him. But the prophets and apostles are the foundations because their authority bears up our weakness. And this was the sense intended by Ambrose when he said: "That Peter was called the rock because he was the first to lay in the nations[1] the foundations of the faith; and, like an immovable rock," that is, by the steadfastness with which he endured to the
- ↑ Huss's text has imitatoribus instead of in nationibus.
