88. Let no man, therefore, when he beholds an order of human establishment, contend that in it resides the claim of Divinity; Gen. xiv. 18 ff. for even that Melchizedek, by whose office Abraham offered sacrifice, the Church doth certainly not hold to be an angel (as some Jewish triflers do), but a holy man and priest of God, who, prefiguring our Lord, Orig. “typum gerens Domini”—“bearing the stamp of our Lord,” marked with His mark, as a coin is stamped with the image and superscription of the king or other authority who issues it. is described as “without father or mother, without history of his descent, without beginning and without end,” Heb. vii. 1 ff. in order to show beforehand the coming into this world of the eternal Son of God, Who likewise was incarnate and then brought forth without any father, begotten as God without mother, and was without history of descent, for it is written: “His generation who shall declare?” Isa. liii. 8.