Chapter XII.—Allegorical
Explanation of Genesis, Chap. I., Concerning the Origin of the
Church and Its Worship.
13. Proceed in thy confession, say to the Lord
thy God, O my faith, Holy, Holy, Holy, O Lord my God, in Thy name
have we been baptized, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in Thy name do
we baptize, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
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because among us also in His
Christ did God make heaven and earth, namely, the spiritual and
carnal people of His Church.
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Yea, and our earth, before it
received the “form of doctrine,”
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was invisible and formless, and we
were covered with the darkness of ignorance. For Thou correctest
man for iniquity,
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and “Thy judgments are a great
deep.”
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But
because Thy Spirit was “borne over the waters,”
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Thy mercy
forsook not our misery,
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and Thou saidst, “Let there be
light,” “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
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Repent ye,
let there be light.
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And because our soul was troubled
within us,
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we
remembered Thee, O Lord, from the land of Jordan, and that
mountain
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equal unto
Thyself, but little for our sakes; and upon our being displeased
with our darkness, we turned unto Thee, “and there was light.”
And, behold, we were sometimes darkness, but now light in the
Lord.
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Matt. xxviii. 19
.
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He similarly interprets “heaven and earth” in
his
De Gen. ad Lit.
ii. 4. With this compare Chrysostom’s
illustration in his
De Pænit.
hom. 8. The Church is like
the ark of Noah, yet different from it. Into that ark as the
animals entered, so they came forth. The fox remained a fox, the
hawk a hawk, and the serpent a serpent. But with the spiritual ark
it is not so, for in it evil dispositions are changed. This
illustration of Chrysostom is used with an effective but rough
eloquence by the Italian preacher Segneri, in his
Quaresimale
, serm. iv. sec.
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Rom. vi. 17
.
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Ps. xxxix. 11
.
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Ps. xxxvi. 6
.
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Gen. i. 3
.
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See p. 47, note 10, above.
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Matt. iii. 2
.
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“His putting repentance and light together is,
for that baptism was anciently called illumination, as
Heb. vi.
4
,
Ps. xlii. 2
.”—W. W. See also p. 118,
note 4, part 1, above, for the meaning of “illumination.”
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Ps. xlii. 6
.
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That is, Christ. See p. 130, note 8, part 2,
above; and compare the
De Div. Quæst.
, lxxxiii. 6.
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Eph. v. 8
.