“They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance.”678 How then shall the sick be strengthened, or how
shall sinners come to repentance? Is it by persevering in the very same courses? or, on the
contrary, is it by undergoing a great change and reversal of their former mode of living, by
which they have brought upon themselves no slight amount of sickness, and many sins?
But ignorance, the mother of all these, is driven out by knowledge. Wherefore the Lord used
to impart knowledge to His disciples, by which also it was His practice to heal those who
were suffering, and to keep back sinners from sin. He therefore did not address them in
accordance with their pristine notions, nor did He reply to them in harmony with the
opinion of His questioners, but according to the doctrine leading to salvation, without hy-
pocrisy or respect of person.
3. This is also made clear from the words of the Lord, who did truly reveal the Son of
God to those of the circumcision— Him who had been foretold as Christ by the prophets;
that is, He set Himself forth, who had restored liberty to men, and bestowed on them the
inheritance of incorruption. And again, the apostles taught the Gentiles that they should
leave vain stocks and stones, which they imagined to be gods, and worship the true God,
who had created and made all the human family, and, by means of His creation, did nourish,
increase, strengthen, and preserve them in being; and that they might look for His Son Jesus
Christ, who redeemed us from apostasy with His own blood, so that we should also be a
sanctified people,—who shall also descend from heaven in His Father’s power, and pass
judgment upon all, and who shall freely give the good things of God to those who shall have
kept His commandments. He, appearing in these last times, the chief cornerstone, has
gathered into one, and united those that were far off and those that were near;679 that is,
the circumcision and the uncircumcision, enlarging Japhet, and placing him in the dwelling
of Shem.680
678 Luke v. 31, 32.
679 Eph. ii. 17.
680 Gen. ix. 27.
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Chapter V.—Christ and His apostles, without any fraud, deception, or hypocrisy,…