should enquire the cause, he immediately subjoined, “that they which are approved may be
made manifest among you.”1717
12. What then is it that they say? “See; Matthew enumerates the generations, and says,
that “from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David until the carrying
away into Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto
Christ are fourteen generations.” Now three times fourteen make forty-two; yet they number
them, and find them forty-one generations, and immediately they bring up their cavilling
and their insulting mockery, and say, “What means it, when in the Gospel it is said that
there are three times fourteen generations, yet when they are numbered all together, they
are found to be not forty-two, but forty-one?” Doubtless there is a great mystery1718 here:
and glad are we, and we give thanks unto the Lord, that by the occasion of cavillers we have
discovered something which gives us in the discovery the more pleasure, in proportion to
its obscurity when it was the object of search; for, as I have said before, we are exhibiting a
spectacle to your minds. From Abraham then to David are fourteen generations: after that,
the enumeration begins with Solomon, for David begat Solomon; the enumeration, I say,
begins with Solomon, and reaches to Jechonias, during whose life the carrying away into
Babylon took place; and so are there other fourteen generations, by reckoning in Solomon
at the head of the second division, and Jechonias also, with whom that enumeration closes
to fill up the number fourteen; and the third division begins with this same Jechonias.
13. Give attention, holy brethren, to this circumstance, at once mysterious and pleasant;
for I confess to you the feeling1719 of my own heart, whereby I believe that when I have
brought it forth, and you have got taste of it, you will give the same report of it. Attend then.
In the third division, beginning from this Jechonias unto the Lord Jesus Christ, are found
fourteen generations; for this Jechonias is reckoned twice, as the last of the former, and the
first of the following division. “But why is Jechonias,” one may say, “reckoned twice?”
Nothing took place of old among the people of Israel, which was not a mysterious figure of
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things to come: and indeed it is not without good reason that Jechonias is reckoned twice,
because if there be a boundary between two fields, be it a stone, or any dividing wall, both
he who is on the one side measures up to that same wall, and he who is on the other takes
the beginning of his measurement again from the same. But why this was not done in the
first connecting link of the divisions, when we number from Abraham to David fourteen
generations, and begin to reckon the fourteen others, not from David over again, but from
Solomon, a reason must be given which contains an important mystery.1720 Attend then.
1717 1 Cor. xi. 19.
1718 Sacramentum.
1719 Gustatum.
1720 Sacramentum.
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Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations…