3. Give heed then. Those five porches were significative of the Law, bearing the sick,
not healing them; discovering, not curing them. But who did cure the sick? He that descended
into the pool. And when did the sick man descend into the pool? When the Angel gave the
sign by the moving of the water. For thus was that pool sanctified, for that the Angel came
down and moved the water. Men saw the water; and from the motion of the troubled water
they understood the presence of the Angel. If any one then went down, he was cured. Why
then was not that sick man cured? Let us consider his own words; “I have no man,” he says,
“when the water is moved, to put me into the pool, but while I am coming, another steppeth
down.”3692 Couldest not thou then step down afterwards, if another step down before thee?
Here it is shown us, that only one was cured at the moving of the water. Whosoever stepped
down first, he alone was cured: but whoever stepped down afterwards, at that moving of
the water was not cured, but waited till it was moved again. What then does this mystery3693
mean? For it is not without a meaning. Attend, Beloved. Waters are put in the Apocalypse
for a figure of peoples. For when in the Apocalypse John saw many waters, he asked what
477
it meant, and it was told him that they were peoples.3694 The water then of the pool signified
the people of the Jews. For as that people was held in by the five books of Moses in the Law,
so that water too was enclosed by five porches. When was the water troubled? When the
people of the Jews was troubled. And when was the people of the Jews troubled, but when
the Lord Jesus Christ came? The Lord’s Passion was the troubling of the water. For the Jews
were troubled when the Lord suffered. See, what was just now read had relation to this
troubling. “The Jews wished to kill Him, not only because He did these things on the sabbaths,
but because He called Himself the Son of God, making Himself equal with God.”3695 For
Christ called Himself the Son after one manner, in another was it said to men, “I said, Ye
are Gods, and ye are all children of the Most High.”3696 For if He had made Himself the
Son of God in such sort as any man whatever may be called the son of God (for by the grace
of God men are called sons of God); the Jews would not have been enraged. But because
they understand Him to call Himself the Son of God in another way, according to that, “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;”3697
and according to what the Apostle saith, “Who being in the form of God, thought it not
robbery to be equal with God;”3698 they saw a man, and they were enraged, because He
3692 John v. 7.
3693 Sacramentum.
3694 Rev. xvii. 15.
3695 John v. 18.
3696 Ps. lxxxii. 6.
3697 John i. 1.
3698 Phil. ii. 6.
990
Again in John v. 2, etc., on the five porches, where lay a great multitude…