number is signified the abolition of all sins, which takes place in Baptism. Not that the Lord Himself had any thing to be forgiven Him in baptism, but that by His humility He set forth its usefulness to us. And though that was only the baptism of John, yet there appeared in it to outward sense the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and hereby was consecrated the Baptism of Christ Himself, whereby Christians were to be baptized. The Father in the voice which came from heaven, the Son in the person of the Mediator Himself, the Holy Ghost in the dove.1812 34. Now, why the number seventy-seven should contain all sins which are remitted in Baptism, there occurs this probable reason, for that the number ten implies the perfection of all righteousness, and blessedness, when the creature denoted by seven1813 cleaves to the Trinity of the Creator; whence also the Decalogue of the Law was consecrated in ten precepts. Now the “transgression” of the number ten is signified by the number eleven; and sin is known to be transgression, when a man, in seeking something “more,” exceeds the rule of justice. And hence the Apostle calls avarice “the root of all evils.”1814 And to the soul which goes a-whoring from God, it is said, in the Person of the same Lord, “Thou wast in hope, if thou didst depart from Me, that thou wouldest have something more.” Because the sinner then has in his transgression, that is, in his sin, regard to himself alone—in that he wishes to gratify himself by some private good of his own (whence they are blamed “who seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s;”1815 and charity is commended, “which seeketh not her own”1816); therefore, this number eleven, by which transgression is signified, is multiplied, not ten times, but seven, and so makes up seventy-seven. For transgression looks1817 not to the Trinity of the Creator, but to the creature, that is, to the man himself, which creature the number seven denotes. Three, because of the soul, in which there1818 is a kind of image of the Trinity of the Creator (for it is in the soul that man has been made after the image of God); and four, because of the body. For the four elements1819 of which the body is made up are known by all. And if any one know them not, he may easily remem- ber, that this body of the world, in which our bodies move along, has, so to say, four prin- cipal parts, which even Holy Scripture is constantly making mention of, East, and West, 1812 Matt. iii. 16. 1813 Septenaria. 1814 1 Tim. vi. 10. 1815 Phil. ii. 21. 1816 1 Cor. xiii. 5. 1817 Pertinet. 1818 Vid. Aug. De Trin. ix. 4, 5; xiv. c. 6–16, etc.; lib. xv. 40–43. Ep. 169 (Ben.). 6. De Civ. Dei, xi. 26 and 28. Conf. xiii. 12 (11) and note in Oxf. ed. 1819 Primordia. 553 Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations…