he who believes not shall be condemned, when that indeed which he believes not is just
what he has not seen, was it not meet that they should themselves first of all be thus reproved
for their own refusal to believe those to whom the Lord had shown Himself at an earlier
stage until they should have seen Him with their own eyes?
77. In what follows we have a further recommendation to take this to have been the last
manifestation of Himself in bodily fashion which the Lord gave to the apostles. For the same
Mark continues in these terms: “And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name
shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and
if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and
they shall recover.”1553 Then he appends this statement: “So then, after the Lord had spoken
unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they
went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the
word by signs following.”1554 Now, when he says, “So then, after the Lord had spoken unto
them, He was received up into heaven,” he appears probably enough to indicate that this
was the last discourse He held with them upon the earth. At the same time, the words do
not seem to shut us up to that idea absolutely. For what he says is not, “after He had spoken
these things unto them,” but simply, “after He had spoken unto them;” and hence it would
be quite admissible, were there any necessity for such a theory, to suppose that this was not
the last discourse, and that that was not the last day on which He was present with them
upon the earth, but that all the matters regarding which He spake with them in all these
days may be referred to in the sentence, “After He had spoken unto them, He was received
up into heaven.” But, inasmuch as the considerations which we have detailed above lead us
rather to conclude that this was the last day, than to suppose that the allusion is specifically
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to the eleven at a time when, in consequence of the absence of Thomas, they were only ten,
we are of opinion that after this discourse which Mark mentions, and with which we have
to connect in their proper order those other words, whether of the disciples or of the Lord
Himself, which are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles,1555 we must believe the Lord to
have been received up into heaven, to wit, on the fortieth day after the day of His resurrection.
78. John, again, although he tells us plainly that he has passed over many of the things
which Jesus did, has been pleased, nevertheless, to give us a narrative of a third manifestation
of Himself, which the Lord granted to the disciples after the resurrection, namely, by the
sea of Tiberias, and before seven of the disciples,—that is to say, Peter, Thomas, Nathanael,
the sons of Zebedee, and two others who are not mentioned by name. That is the occasion
when they were engaged in fishing; when, in obedience to His command, they cast the nets
1553 Mark xvi. 17, 18.
1554 Mark xvi. 19, 20.
1555 Acts i. 4–8.
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Of Christ’s Subsequent Manifestations of Himself to the Disciples, and of…