Christ free^aswilhout sin. He ivasamoni/st theunfruitful 411
infirmities of His Passion were changed into the elorv of BookY^Y
His Resurrection. For the Lord had those infirmities of our—^—
^
mortal state, which we endure as the desert of our iniquity,
as a kind of bands with which He wished of His own accord
to be bound, even to death, and which He loosed marvel-
lously by His Resurrection. For to be hungry, to thirst, to
be weary, to be bound, to be scourged, and to be crucified, was
the bond ofour mortality. Butwhen on the completion ofHis
death the veil of the temple was rent, the rocks were cleft, the
tombs were opened, the barriers of hell were laid bare, what
else is shewn by so many arguments of such mighty power,
but that those bands of our infirmity were loosened, that He,
Who had come to take on Him the form of a servant, might
return in freedom to heaven even with His members } Of
which bonds of His the Apostle Peter witnesses, saying.
Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains ofhell^ Acts 2,
because it was not possible for Him to be holden of it.
And because after His Death and Resurrection He deigned
to call the Gentiles to the grace of faith, after His bands are
said to have been loosened, it is fitly subjoined
;
Ver. 6. To Whom I have given a house in the solitude,
and His tabernacle in the land of saltness.
68. For in the Gentile world, in which there was no xxiii.
Patriarch, no Prophet, there was hardly a man to exercise
his reason to gain a knowledge of God. Of this solitude it is
said by Isaiah ; The desertand the pathless landshall rejoice, is.35,1.
and the solitude shall exiUt and blossom as the lily. And
again it is said of the Church; He loill make her desert a5ls.5i,3.
delights, and her solitude as the garden of the Lord. But
this same solitude, which, before it knew the true wisdom of
God, had brought foith saltness, is mentioned again as a
land oT saltness ; because it produced no verdure of good
understanding, and savoured only of what was wrong. He
receives therefore his house in the solitude, and His tabernacle
in the land of saltness, because God when Incarnate for
men, forsook Judaea, and possessed the hearts of the Gentiles.
Whence it is said to Him by the voice of the Father, through
the Prophet ; Ask of Me, and I will give thee the heathen Ps. 2,8.
for Thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Thy
possession. Who, as He is God, gives all things with the
K e 2