Chapter IV.—Of the Reason Why Forty Generations (Not Including Christ Himself) are Found in Matthew, Although He Divides Them into Three Successions of Fourteen Each. 8. The matter next to be introduced, moreover, is one requiring, in order to its right apprehension and contemplation, a reader of the greatest attention and carefulness. For it has been acutely observed that Matthew, who had proposed to himself the task of commend- ing the kingly character in Christ, named, exclusive of Christ Himself, forty men in the series of generations. Now this number denotes the period in which, in this age and on this earth, it behoves us to be ruled by Christ in accordance with that painful discipline whereby “God scourgeth,” as it is written, “every son that He receiveth;”684 and of which also an apostle says that “we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”685 This dis- cipline is also signified by that rod of iron, concerning which we read this statement in a Psalm: “Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron;”686 which words occur after the saying, “Yet I am set king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion!”687 For the good, too, are ruled with a rod of iron, as it is said of them: “The time is come that judgment should begin at the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be to them that obey not the gospel of God? and if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?”688 To the same persons the sentence that follows also applies: “Thou shall dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” For the good, indeed, are ruled by this discipline, while the wicked are crushed by it. And these two different classes of persons are mentioned here as if they were the same, on account of the identity of the signs689 employed in reference to the wicked in common with the good. 9. That this number, then, is a sign of that laborious period in which, under the discipline of Christ the King, we have to fight against the devil, is also indicated by the fact that both the law and the prophets solemnized a fast of forty days,—that is to say, a humbling of the soul,—in the person of Moses and Elias, who fasted each for a space of forty days.690 And what else does the Gospel narrative shadow forth under the fast of the Lord Himself, during which forty days He was also tempted of the devil,691 than that condition of temptation which appertains to us through all the space of this age, and which He bore in the flesh 684 Heb. xii. 6. 685 Acts xiv. 22. 686 Ps. ii. 9. 687 Ps. ii. 6. 688 1 Pet. iv. 17, 18. 689 Sacramenta. 690 Exod. xxxiv. 28; 1 Kings xix. 8. 691 Matt. iv. 1, 2. Of the Reason Why Forty Generations (Not Including Christ Himself) are Found in Matthew, Although He Divides Them into Three Successions of Fourteen Each. 230 Of the Reason Why Forty Generations (Not Including Christ Himself) are Found…