8. Now that we have, as it were, just glanced at the inspiration of the Divine Scriptures, we must pass on to the way to read and understand them; for very many mistakes have been made, because the right method of examining the holy texts has not been discovered by the greater number of readers. Hardhearted and unlearned readers belonging to the Circumcision have not believed on our Saviour, because it is their habit to follow the bare letter of the prophecies concerning Him, and they do not see Him with their bodily eyes proclaiming liberty to the captives, nor building what they think the true city of God, nor cutting off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, nor eating butter and honey, and before He knoweth or preferreth evil choosing the good.They still suppose that prophecy declares that the |9 four-footed animal, the wolf, shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the bull, and the lion feed together, and that a little child shall lead them; and that the cow and the bear shall be pastured together, their young ones being reared together, and that the lion shall eat straw like the ox. Because they saw nothing like this when He Whom we believe to be Christ dwelt on the earth, they did not receive Jesus, but crucified Him, maintaining that He had no right to call Himself Christ. And heretics when they read the words, "A fire is kindled in mine anger"; and, "I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and fourth generation"; and, "It repenteth me that I have anointed Saul to be king"; and, "I am God that maketh peace and create evil"; and in another place, "Shall evil befall a city, and the Lord hath not done it"; or again, "Evil is come down from the Lord unto the gates of Jerusalem"; and, "An evil spirit from the Lord plagued Saul"; and countless similar passages: when they read these, I say, they will not venture to deny the Divine origin of the Scriptures, but believing them to have come from the Demiurge, Whom the Jews worship, and holding that the Demiurge is imperfect and lacking in goodness, they suppose our Saviour while He dwelt on earth to have proclaimed a more perfect God, Whom, from different motives, they affirm not to be the Demiurge. And having thus once for all revolted from the Demiurge, Who is the only God uncreate, they have given themselves up to vain imaginations, inventing for themselves various theories, so as to account for the origin of things that are seen, and for the origin of others not seen, and all this is the offspring of their own fancy. And yet, as a matter of fact, the less sophisticated of those who in their self-confidence have left the Church |10 allow no God greater than the Demiurge, and so far they are right; but their conception of Him is such as would discredit an extremely cruel and unjust man.