9. Let us then return to our subject. The perfection of righteousness is shown by the
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number forty. What is it to fulfil the number forty? To restrain one’s self from the love of
this world. Restraint from temporal things, that they be not loved to our destruction, is, as
it were, fasting from this world. Therefore the Lord fasted forty days, and Moses, and Elias.
He then who gave His servants the power to fast forty days, could He not fast eighty or a
hundred? Why then did He not will to fast more than He had given His servants to do, but
because in this number forty is the mystery of fasting, the restraint from this world? What
is this to say? What the Apostle says; “The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”3723
He then fulfils the number forty. And what doth the Lord show? That because Moses did
this, this Elias, this Christ, that this both the Law, and the Prophets, and the Gospel, teach;
that thou mayest not think that there is one thing in the Law, another in the Prophets, an-
other in the Gospel. All Scripture teacheth thee nothing else, but restraint from the love of
the world, that thy love may speed on to God. As a figure that the Law teaches this, Moses
fasted forty days. As a figure that the Prophets teach it, Elias fasted forty days. As a figure
that the Gospel teaches it, the Lord fasted forty days. And therefore in the mount too these
three appeared, the Lord in the middle, Moses and Elias at the sides. Wherefore? Because
the Gospel itself receives testimony from the Law and the Prophets.3724 But why in the
number forty is the perfection of righteousness? In the Psalter it is said, “O God, I will sing
a new song unto Thee, upon a psaltery of ten strings will I sing praises unto Thee.”3725
Which signifies the ten precepts of the Law, which the Lord came not to destroy, but to
fulfil. And the Law itself throughout the whole world, it is evident, hath four quarters, the
East, and West, South, and North, as the Scripture saith. And hence the vessel which bare
all the emblematic animals, which was exhibited to Peter, when he was told, “Kill and eat,”3726
that it might be shown that the Gentiles should believe and enter into the body of the Church,
just as what we eat entereth into our body, and which was let down from heaven by four
corners (these are the four quarters of the world), showed that the whole world should believe.
Therefore in the number forty is restraint from the world. This is the fulfilling of the Law:
now the fulfilling of the Law is charity. And therefore before the Pasch we fast forty days.
For this time before the Pasch is the sign of this our toilsome life, wherein, in toils, and cares,
and continence, we fulfil the Law. But afterwards we celebrate the Pasch, that is, the days
of the Lord’s resurrection signifying our own resurrection. Therefore fifty days are celebrated;
because the reward of the denarius is added to the forty, and it becomes fifty. Why is the
reward a denarius? Have ye not read, how that they who were hired into the vineyard,
3723 Gal. vi. 14.
3724 Rom. iii. 21.
3725 Ps. cxliv. 9.
3726 Acts x. 13.
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Again in John v. 2, etc., on the five porches, where lay a great multitude…